





. V -^ ,6^ 






'^, c^ "-M^^ 












^ ^'^ 



?/. * N ' 



^\i^^ .^ 



■^^° .^-^ 



\*' .6 



_>♦' S ' • 7- ''A^ 







■>if, '^.^C^^-i 



.o•^^o'^o../., 






■"oo^ 



"^^'^^\^- 



.^""^ ^ 



^, 



y aV' 



#\o 






.^ •%. . ^ 







*"l.,-^* 






$^' 






-0' 






X^ ^-<. 



'^^^ '-rr;-^^:.o'^ 









■V;:^ v^' 










^ 



o 









V' ,<v 






iv^' .^ 



'^% •'^^ ^ :" 



^J-. V 



.xi •■':^'.- 












vV '^>;. 



,x^^^^ 



»^:^^' 



y C 



C4 \ 



■*bo^ 



^^ -%.. \ 



f 



\> * 







%-/^^^,^.. 












%^^- 






.,^'. 



'/, '^b 



,-0 



.■v-' 



'J- V" 



»^' "^.^'^^P^ 



•*». 






■^r 









0-" 

















V"":-/>"''X''*-:/ -'•,V' 






vO 








-^ ^O 


0^ 






^^^ 


■^^ 


/*.o 


^0^ 








.^" 


* " / 






V> . 







■> V 






.0^. 




■ 'i ^' - 




^ 


^>^^ s- ,^ 






,»^ ,0 




8 1 







Z' 






On 

00 



2 

o 
o 

a 
<: 

w 

X 
H 

U- 

O 
> 

y 



O 



THE 



ARLINGTON MILLS 



II 



a fglstorical antr Bescriptbe g)feetr!) 



WITH SOME ACCOUNT 



WORSTED DRESS-GOODS MANUFACTURE IN 
THE UNITED STATES 



ILLUSTRATED 



BOSTON 

1891 



T5'1615 



Copyright, 1S91, 
By the ARLINGTON MILLS. 



2,-s-gril 
S.I0 



PRSS3 or 



i&ocitintU ant) C^urcijiU 

BOSTON 






0,^0'^ 



V,. 



^^ CONTENTS 



Page 
I. The American Manufacturer 9 

II. History of the Arlington Mills 24 

III. Description of the Arlington Mills 4° 

IV. The Cotton Mill and its Products 65 

V. The Worsted Manufacture in the United States . . 82 

VI. Products of the Arlington Worsted Mills . . .102 

VII. The Factory System in the United States . .109 

Index ^^7 



■5>>, 



ILLUSTRATIONS 



oj«4c 



Isometric View of the Arlington Mills 
The Original Arlington Mill, 1865 .... 
The Second Arlington Mill, 1867 .... 
Ground Plan of Arlington Mills .... 
The First Storehouse, 1867 . . . . . 

The New Storehouse, 1886 

The Wool-Sorting Room 

A Spinning-Room, Worsted Mills .... 

The Arlington Weave-Room 

The Arlington Cotton Mill, Front View 

A Spinning-Room, Cotton Mills .... 

The Arlington Worsted Mills, Rear View . 

The Arlington Cotton Mills, Rear View 

The Worsted Spinning Mill, from Chalmers Street 



Page 

Frontispiece 

facing 36 

30 

40 

44 
46 

48 
56 
62 
66 
72 
90 
" 110 



ARLINGTON MILLS, 

LAWRENCE, MASS. 

PRESIDENT. 

ALBERT WINSLOW NICKERSON. 

TREASURER. 

WILLIAM WHITMAN. 

CLERK. 

WILLIAM P. ELLISON. 

DIRECTORS. 

ALBERT WINSLOW NICKERSON, 
WILLIAM A. RUSSELL, CHARLES C. BURR, 

GEORGE A. NICKERSON, WILLIAM WHITMAN. 

RESIDENT AGENT. 

ROBERT REDFORD. 

SUPERINTENDENT OF WORSTED MILLS. 

WILLIAM D. HARTSHORNE. 

SUPERINTENDENT OF COITON MILLS. 

GEORGE E. TOWNE. 

SELLING AGENTS. 

HARDING, WHITMAN, & CO. 

Treasurer's Office .... 78 CHAUNCY STREET, BOSTON. 
New York Salesrooms ... 80 AND 82 LEONARD STREET. 
Boston Salesrooms .... 78 CHAUNCY STREET. 



THE ARLINGTON MILLS. 




THE AMERICAN MANUFACTURER. 

^^HE modern textile factory is the marvel of the age. 
Here wool as it comes from the sheep's back, and 
cotton as it is sent from the plantations, begin and 
finish the journey through which they are trans- 
formed into fabrics for the clothing of men and women. 
In this journey the raw material passes through a succession 
of manipulations, by the aid of machinery, each 
Evolution Qf which seems more marvelous than that which 

of textile 

manufactures, preccdes it, and all of which the inventive genius 
of the last century has contributed to revolutionize 
the textile manufacture of the world. The automatic manu- 
facture of textiles had its origin in Great Britain, where the 
genius of Kay worked out the fly-shuttle, Crompton invented 
the mule, Arkwright perfected mechanical spinning, Cart- 
wright devised the power loom, and Lister and Noble and 



10 THE ARLINGTON MILLS. 

others the combing machine; and all of whom share with 
dozens of others, including very many of our own fellow- 
citizens, the glory of a transformation the most wonderful in 
industrial development, and which made Great Britain for 
more than a century the chief textile manufacturing nation 
of the world. 

Step by step these textile industries have been transplanted 
to the United States. Under wise and fostering legislation, our 
people have learned to make their own clothing; and in time, 
if this legislation continues, our country will supplant Great 
Britain as the first of manufacturing nations. 

Very few of the people who buy and wear cotton and woolen 
goods have ever seen them made, or have anything save the 
vaguest conception of the gigantic mills, the wonderful ma- 
chinery, the multitudinous processes, the remarkable skill, and 
the large ability required in their fabrication. 

In this little book we propose to take our readers through 

a typical American manufacturing establishment, the Arlington 

Mills, at Lawrence, Mass., in order that they may 

Atypical learn something of the processes of one of the 

American . 

worsted mill, chicf branches of textile manufacture in our own 
country, — that of worsted dress-goods. We shall 
record the history of this mill and its growth from a humble 
beginning into one of the greatest of the American manu- 
factories ; we shall describe the numerous structures in which 
it conducts its operations, enumerate its great variety of 
products, and afford some insight into the manner ih which 
they are fabricated. 



THE ARLINGTON MILLS. 11 

In the course of our narrative we shall incidentally recall the 
earlier history of the dress-goods manufacture in the United 
States, allude to some of the processes peculiar to it, and 
describe some of its products, both here and abroad. The 
technical details of the manufacture we shall touch upon only 
in the most general manner. The experienced manufacturer 
wants no description of the operations of any machine he 
uses, nor of the processes of any part of the manufacture ; while 
the general reader can learn little from such descriptions. 
Without attempting to be either erudite or exhaustive, we shall 
seek to make this book something more than the record of the 
single mill whose name it bears, and a contribution, slight 
indeed, but intended to be at least accurate, to the history of 
one of the youngest, yet already one of the most vigorous, of 
our special textile industries. 

The foreign manufacturer, in visiting an American mill, is 

astonished at the diversity of operations performed in one 

establishment, nor does he readily comprehend how 

Contrast j^ ^^^ y^^ done SO successfully. The custom gen- 

between " 

English and crally is, in England, for the scouring, the carding, 
mius'^ ^ ^^^ '^^ combing of the wool to be done by one 
establishment, the spinning by another, the weaving 
by another, the dyeing by another, and very often the finish- 
ing by still another; while the packing of the goods for the 
market constitutes another distinct and important branch of 
business. At the Arlington Mills we find all the processes, 
both for cotton and for wool, from the sorting of the wool to 
the boxing and shipping of the goods, conducted not under one 



12 THE ARLINGTON MILLS. 

roof exactly, for they require more than a dozen buildings, but 
under one management, and as the individual parts of the same 
establishment. 

This division of work in the English textile manufacture has 

a historical origin, which proves it is not an evolution due to 

its greater economical advantages, as has been fre- 

How the quently claimed for it. The English factory system 

division is a direct evolution from the hand and home in- 

be ^an"^ dustry of the eighteenth century. Both carding and 

combing were originally carried on in the homes of 

the work-people. The wool was weighed out to carders or 

combers by the merchant at the storehouse, and taken to their 

homes ; thence it was returned in the form of tops or card rolls, 

and again given out to be spun. The yarn was sold to the 

weavers, who carried their product to the markets on their 

backs or by pack-horses. At the markets or the inns the 

merchants bought the cloths, and in turn sold them to the 

fullers, and in time they reached the shops of the drapers 

after passing through many hands. The forehanded among all 

these groups of workers in wool saved their earnings, became 

employers on a small scale, and many of them were 

."™ ^ the founders of the great houses which still con- 

origin. " 

duct the manufacture on the basis of its original 
subdivision. Small capital prevented large enterprises in 
these early days. But the wool comber, for instance, whose 
savings permitted him in time to buy his own stock, which he 
sold in the form of tops, gradually took other combers into 
his employ, and as machinery came into vogue, he was able to 



THE ARLINGTON MILLS. 18 

utilize it, still selling his tops to the spinner, who, evolved from 
the household industry in the same way, still sold his yarn to 
the weaver; and so on, to the completed fabric. Thus it hap- 
pens that the so-called English system of subdivision in 
manufacture grew up ffom primitive custom, and is the out- 
come of an economic necessity, rather than a tendency towards 
subdivision as productive of better results. Indeed the ten- 
dency in Great Britain to-day is in the other direction, and 
towards the consolidation of all the phases of the manufacture 
under one management. The latest report under the British 
Factories and Workshop Acts shows that there are now 264 
worsted mills in the United Kingdom, with 1,411,327 spinning 
spindles, where spinning only is done, and 288 establishments 
devoted wholly to worsted weaving. But there are also 125 
establishments, with 931,799 spinning spindles, where spinning 
and weaving are carried on together ; and a comparison of the 
spinning capacity, with the total number of mills reported in 
each group, shows that the latter must be much the largest 
establishments on the average. 

The factory system of manufacturing grew up in the United 
States under circumstances wholly different from those we have 
been describing. Up to the time of the Revolution, 
The "home- wc had no textile manufactures here, save of the 
indl^tries of ^ouschold description. Our people wore either 
America. « homcspuu " or imported fabrics. In the mean- 
while the factory system was developing with tre- 
mendous strides in Great Britain. Realizing what a source of 
wealth and commercial supremacy it must become, and confi- 



14 THE ARLINGTON MILLS. 

dently anticipating that it was England's proud destiny to man- 
ufacture the clothing of the entire civilized world, the British 
Parliament enacted laws which prohibited, under the most strin- 
gent penalties, the exportation of textile machines, or any parts 
or models of them. At the close of the Revolution, when our 
people began to turn their attention to the industrial develop- 
ment of their country, they found the doors closed and barred 
against them. They had none of this new machinery, the use 
of which had already revolutionized textile manufacture, and 
they had no means of obtaining it. The people of Pawtucket, 
Rhode Island, appropriately celebrated in October, 1890, the 
centennial of the establishment of the first cotton factory in the 

United States equipped with the modern spinning 
si^atei-^ machinery. It came to this country in the brain of 

Samuel Slater. Machines and models we could not 
get; but no law could prevent this mechanical genius, who had 
served a long apprenticeship at the establishment of Jedediah 
Strutt, the partner of Richard Arkwright, from rebuilding in 
this country, without models, machines for spinning identical 
with those he had helped to construct in his English home. 

In like manner the Scholfields, who started at Byfield, Massa- 
chusetts, in 1 794, the first American woolen mill in which the 

English machinery was used, brought it to the 
o ,- ,^^^ United States in their heads, — reinvented it, so to 

Scholfields. ' ' 

speak. Thus the textile manufactures, as conducted 
under the modern factory system, had their beginnings here 
without any previous preparation or slow evolution such as 
preceded them in Great Britain. 



THE ARLINGTON MILLS. 15 

It required capital to embark in the business under these con- 
ditions, and at the first the corporate form was a necessity — a 
number of wealthy men associating themselves together to sup- 
ply the money needed to build a factory and equip it with this 
novel and expensive machinery. Naturally, they found it nec- 
essary to carry on the business in all its parts. They could not 
spin wool for others to weave, because there were no others 
with the capital required for weaving on any extended scale. 

This review of the genesis of our textile industries makes it 

clear why the system of manufacturing, as carried on in the 

United States, differs so widely, as a rule, from that which, as a 

rule, prevails in Great Britain. It has thus happened that as 

individuals have established themselves in the business of wool 

manufacture, without resorting to the corporate form, they have 

most frequently carried it on in all its processes, from the fiber 

to the fabric. The fulling mills, which in the early 

The gradual days Were found on nearly every New England 

ibappearance g^j-g^j^ f^j. ^j^g finishing of the homcspun cloths 

of prxmitive ' o i^ 

methods, wovcn in the households, have all disappeared with 
the upgrowing of our factories ; and the carding 
mills, which were once as common in the villages as the shoe 
shop and the grocery store, are almost a thing of the past. 

But so recent is their disappearance, that the treasurer of the 
Arlington Mills (himself not yet fifty years old), where 40,000 
worsted spindles are each of them spinning more yarn in a day 
than the old hand-wheels could turn out in a week, well remem- 
bers in his own family the great woolen spinning-wheel which 
stood in a corner of the kitchen and supplied all the yarn for 



16 THE ARLINGTON MILLS. 

the family homespun. In many an attic these wheels may be 
found to-day. Scarcely two generations have passed since 
the bulk of our clothing was made on hand machinery, in 
precisely the manner in which it had been made from the 
beginning of recorded history. 

It may be admitted that under the American system there is 

not as uniform success in the woolen manufacture as has marked 

the history of the industry in the land of its chief 

Advantages development. The number of wrecks which have 

En lish strewn the pathway of progress in the industry is 

system. indeed somewhat appalling. It is rare that one 
man is found equally qualified to supervise each and 
every one of the several processes in this most difficult and 
complicated of all manufactures. The English manufacturer, 
by devoting his attention exclusively to a single branch of the 
business, such as the spinning or the dyeing, comes to know it 
thoroughly, and transmits his knowledge from generation to gen- 
eration, undoubtedly with some gain in economical conditions. 

In his history of the rise and progress of the manufacturing 

enterprises of Lowell (" Introduction of the Power Loom and 

Origin of Lowell"), Mr. Nathan Appleton says: 

Nathan a Qj^g thing is Certain, manufactures cannot be car- 

Appleton 

quoted. ried on to any great extent in this country in any 
other manner than by joint-stock companies. A large 
capital is necessary to success. Individuals possessing sufficient 
capital will not give themselves up to this pursuit. It is contrary 
to the genius of the country." The idea here expressed has 
not always been borne out in the history of Lawrence. 



THE ARLINGTON MILLS. 17 

But the tendency there, at Lowell, at Fall River, at most of 
the New England manufacturing centers, has been steadily 
towards concentration in large establishments ; and, 
The present as a Tulc, thesc great corporations have met with 
towIrZ quite as uniform success as the mills organized on 
consolidation, a Smaller basis, and under individual ownership. 
We have seen the general tendency of the country 
in this respect, in the statistical returns of the State and 
Federal censuses, from which it appears that while our out- 
put of woolen goods is yearly increasing with great rapidity, 
the number of establishments devoted to this manufacture 
is slightly decreasing. Experience has certainly proved, 
in many particular cases, that the best results, both as to the 
quality of the fabric and the comparative cost of its 
Large production, follow from this concentration. Large 

capital 

necessary. Capital commauds great resources ; it seizes upon 
the latest improvements in machinery and method, 
regardless of cost ; it presses forward into new fields not acces- 
sible to the competitor of more limited resources. 

Fifty years ago the cotton mills of New England averaged 
less than eight hundred spindles each, and a mill with ten 
thousand spindles was unknown. To-day we have many mills 
with five times that number. One set of cards was the usual 
equipment of the pioneer woolen mill; to-day a mill of that 
capacity feels the stress of competition with mills which con- 
sume in a few hours the wool that would suffice for its year's 
supply. 

As our mills have grown in capacity, they have developed 



18 THE ARLINGTON MILLS. 

among us a small body of trained men who act as their gen- 
eral managers, — men in whom enormous powers are neces- 
sarily vested, who carry vast responsibilities, and 
Qualifications whosc succcss provcs the possession of the widest 
\ , experience, the most varied talents, and the most 

successful ■■• 

manufacturer, thorough cxecutivc Capacity, The range of their 
duties involves practical experience in the man- 
ufacture itself; it involves a knowledge of mercantile business, 
upon which the successful marketing of the goods depends ; it 
involves large financial ability, for provision must be made for 
materials far in advance of their use, and goods must be 
manufactured a year before they can be turned into money 
again. 

The men who make marked successes in the management 
and development of great manufacturing establishments in the 
United States are much rarer than are the successful 
What they bank prcsidcuts or presidents of colleges, although 
forthe"^ the world is not apt to hear so much of them, or 
nation. to think SO much of their achievements. The life- 
work of a Lowell, a Lawrence, or a Bigelow con- 
tributed more substantially to the material development of 
their country than that of many of the men famous in cabinet 
or senate. It was a knowledge of the unheralded achievements 
of such bold and far-sighted men which led Voltaire to say that 
he knew many merchants of Amsterdam of more penetration 
and administrative ability than Mazarin or Richelieu. 

The qualities of these pioneers in our textile manufactures 
are repeated in their successors, who are to-day directing 



THE ARLINGTON MILLS. ' 19 

the millions of spindles and the thousands of looms which clothe 

our people. Only by studying closely the organism of one of 

these establishments can we realize the wide range 

The of the concerns over which they have jurisdiction. 

organism 'pj^gj.g jg hardly any branch of human knowledge 

of a great -' -' •-» 

mill- that is not called into requisition at one stage or 

another of this marvelously diversified industry. 

At the beginning, the highest engineering skill is demanded 

to create the buildings in which the many branches of the work 

are to be carried on. 

The location and arrangement of the structures must be 

planned with reference to the relations of one branch of the 

manufacture to the others, the utmost economy of 

The power, and its most effective distribution. Then 

engineer ^^ architect of the woolen factory deals with the 

and the -' 

architect, niccst problems of his profession, in the construc- 
tion of the buildings with reference to the bearing 
of great weights, and the strain and vibration of machinery in 
incessant motion. 

Then the builder of machinery is called in ; and success in 

the textile manufactures, more largely than in any other branch 

of manufacturing, depends upon good judgment in 

The ^he selection of the machinery to be employed. 

selection of 

machinery. Improvcmcnts and modifications of textile ma- 
chinery are made almost daily. Perfect as this 
machinery seems to be to him who watches it perform its work 
with a precision which the human hand seeks in vain to ap- 
proximate, yet the simplest of all these machines is suscepti- 



20 THE ARLINGTON MILLS. 

ble of improvement; and the successful manufacturer is the 
one who can detect those new inventions which mark a dis- 
tinct gain either in economy, efficiency, precision, or rapidity 
of production. Many a manufacturer has wrecked himself by 
mistakes in equipping his mill. 

Then comes the purchase of the raw material, which is 
drawn from the four quarters of the globe, which 

"^^^ presents a greater variety, in quality and character- 
raw 

material, istics, than any other substance known to man, and 

which must be selected with special reference to 

the particular fabric into which it is designed to transform it. 

Then, again, come the skill and experience required to 

supervise the manipulation of the material thus carefully 

gathered together. For, while engineering genius 

^'^^ has done much in the construction and arrangement 

processes of 

manufacture, of the buildiugs, and invention has placed ma- 
chinery so nearly perfect at the command of the 
manufacturer, there is not a moment, in the whole journey 
from the fiber to the fabric, when the human oversight is not 
necessary and when the keenest, practised judgment must not 
be alert, to detect defects and shortcomings. 

Turn next to the dye-house, where the noble science of 
chemistry finds its most useful and most inspiring laboratory. 
Its secrets here reveal themselves to be utilized in 
Dyeing, the tints and shades, delicate as those of Nature 
herself, which the manufacturer imprisons in his 
fabrics. No department of the textile manufacture has ad- 
vanced more rapidly than this one, and none is bigger with 



THE ARLINGTON MILLS. 21 

promise of reward to the workers in it. A quarter of a 
century ago the brilliant colors and effects which are now 
obtained from the products of coal-tar were unknown; and 
the best manufacturers are forever on the watch for novel 
combinations and effects, which are always making their ap- 
pearance. 

Intimately allied with the dye-house is the designing room ; 

and here comes in an art by itself, giving room for the play 

of the highest education, the most technical knowl- 

The edge, and the most artistic temperament. Those 

designing 

room. who succccd in this department must not only be 
gifted in taste and in art, but they must also pos- 
sess a knowledge of the loom itself; they must know ex- 
actly how to place each thread to effect an almost infinite 
variety of combination weaves, through which may be worked 
out as many different patterns. And thus we come to the 
final test of the successful manufacturer, in some 
Must respects the most crucial of all, the capacity to 
^o^uLr understand the popular taste, to anticipate its de- 
taste, mands, to combine what the people want with what 
they ought to want, with a degree of skill that will 
make the goods sell and at the same time make them a credit 
to the good taste of the makers. Fashion is an exacting 
goddess to her own devotees ; but to the textile manufacturer she 
is a despot, sudden in whim, fickle as the breeze, relentless as 
adamant, before whose decrees he must bow, whose freaks he 
must execute, whose variations he must, if so be it he can, 
anticipate, or fall by the wayside. 



22 THE ARLINGTON MILLS. 

So many-sided, so wide-embracing, so cosmopolitan in its 
requirements is the business of the successful textile manu- 
facturer ! It is little wonder that so many fail in a 
Perfect ^gj^j gQ exacting. Success, on any large scale, is 

organization 

required, possiblc Only with the most perfect system of organ- 
ization, with concentration of responsibility in the 
first instance, and its most minute and perfect subdivision 
from the common center. Under the general manager, and 
responsible directly to him, are the superintendents of the 
several great departments of the manufacture, each supreme in 
his field, each skilled in his specialty, each capable of managing 
men, and each with sole control over the employment of his 
assistants. Then come the overseers of the various departments 
of each branch of the manufacture, — they in their turn having 
their subordinate aids, and each and every person, from the 
highest to the lowest, understanding exactly what is required of 
him or her, and meeting that requirement with that precision 
of discipline which is necessary to success. To accomplish 
perfect results in systems so extensive, where success is 
dependent upon the utmost uniform attention to the minutest 
details, systems of checks are necessary, so complete in 
their operation that it will be possible to determine at any 
moment whether the requisite amount of product is resulting 
from a given amount of labor in any department, and to locate, 
without error, the individual responsibility for the slightest 
defect at any stage of the manufacture. 

Certainly no line of work requires for its successful prosecu- 
tion on a large scale more varied powers of intellect, or makes 



THE ARLINGTON MILLS. 23 

more constant demand upon those elements of character 

which conquer success. Nor is it any wonder that the art 

of manufacturing becomes absorbing and attrac- 

Possibiiities |-jyg^ j-^y j^g variety, its risks, and its possibihties. 

of constant 

improvement. Thcrc is no limit to attainment in this field; and 
success constantly opens new opportunities for the 
creative intellect engaged in developing this great national in- 
dustry, the most ancient of all the human arts, and the most 
beneficent of all, in its relations to the comfort, the happiness, 
and the prosperity of the whole people. 





II. 

HISTORY OF THE ARLINGTON MILLS. 

|HE Arlington Mills date back only to 1865. The 
corporation was first known as the Arlington Woolen 
Mills, the name being changed after the manufacture 
of worsteds was undertaken. The early history' of 
the enterprise was not unmarked 'by reverses; but it has 
probably developed as rapidly as any establishment in the 
United States that does not antedate it in origin. 

Origin 

of the With its growth has developed a splendid city, — a 
Arlington ^j, ^j^^^ unkuowu to the gazetteers of the State 

Mills. ^ ^ 

as recently as 1845, ^^^ o^^ i^^ whose advancing 

prosperity the Arlington Mills has played a large part. . 

The Arlington Mills are situated on the Spicket river, which 

the old chroniclers called the Spiggot, about midway 

'^^^ between the Merrimac river and the Massachusetts 

Spicket 

river. and Ncw Hampshire boundary line. The location 
places the worsted mill in Lawrence and the cot- 
ton mill in Methuen. The Spicket is a narrow and pictu- 



THE ARLINGTON- MILLS. 25 

resque stream, rising in Salem, New Hampshire, and meeting 
the Merrimac nearly opposite the mouth of the Shawsheen, 
in Andover. On its way through the town of Methuen it 
has three falls within the distance of a mile, and dams have 
been built at each of them, in order to make the power 
available. The upper dam, where there is a beautiful natural 
fall of forty feet, is used by the Methuen Company, manu- 
facturers of ticks, denims, and other cotton goods. The 
middle dam supplies power to the Metliuen Woolen Company ; 
while the third, or lower dam, serves the Arlington Mills, the 
subject of our sketch. 

The original Arlington Mills relied wholly upon its water 
supply for power, and before the enlargement began, one tur- 
bine wheel of about sixty horse-power sufficed to 
The propel all its machinery. Perhaps the most com- 
^^ofthT^'^ prehensive idea of the extent of the growth of the 
mills. Arlington Mills will come to the reader when he 
reaches the chapters in which its present capacity 
of over five thousand horse- power is described as compared 
with the single turbine wheel of 1865. 

The corporation was still utilizing about one hundred and 
twenty horse-power from two turbine wheels, to run a small 
portion of its spinning machinery, as recently as 1888, when the 
old wooden mill was torn down. Since that date water-power 
has only been used to run a portion of the electric-lighting 
plant, although in the dyeing and finishing departments the 
water of the Spicket river remains an indispensable adjunct 
of the manufacture. > 



26 THE ARLINGTON MILLS. 

The Arlington is one of a chain of manufacturing estab- 
lishments in Lawrence or immediately contiguous, dependent 
upon the Spicket for their water, and whose or- 
The igin is not to be traced to the utilization of the 

„ ^^^!'' • water-power of the Merrimac, by the Essex Man- 

Manufactunng ■•• -' 

Company. ufacturing Company, in 1845, to which the rapid 
development of Lawrence as a manufacturing cen- 
ter is directly due. 

The story of the successive steps to utilize the water-power 

of the Merrimac river is one of the grandest chapters in the 

history of New England. The men whose names 

'^^^ are identified with these enterprises possessed what 

early '■ ^ 

manufacturers HOW sccms like prophctic insight into the industrial 
Massachusetts, possibilities which lay hidden in the bosom of that 
splendid river. It was not alone, nor even chiefly, 
the possession of her unsurpassed facilities in the way of 
water-power that made Massachusetts the early home of the 
textile industries; it was because the Commonwealth was the 
mother of such sons as Francis C. Lowell, Amos and Abbott 
Lawrence, Nathan Appleton, Patrick T. Jackson, Kirk Boott, 
Samuel Batchelder, J. Wiley Edmands, and their associates, the 
founders of our textile industries, — the men whose achieve- 
ments impart a luster to her name not surpassed by her states- 
men, her scholars, or her poets, — men with the brains to 
understand what wealth these rivers could be made to create, 
what splendid cities might spring from their banks, what thou- 
sands of people might there earn their livelihood, — men with 
the courage, the energy, and the skill to convert these river- 



o 

JO 

O 

z 
> 



> 

z 
o 

H 
O 



00 
ON 




THE ARLINGTON MILLS. 'il 

beds into mill-races, and these meadows into teeming cities. 

Far-sighted as these men of genius and determination were, 

they could hardly have foreseen what a marvelous 

Lowell growth a half-century would bring to the cities they 

and 

Lawrence, foundcd, and which were so appropriately named 
Lowell and Lawrence, after the men who conceived 
the enterprises with which these cities originated.-^ 

At Lawrence the aggregation of mills includes the Pacific 

' Mr. J. F. C. Hayes, in his " History of Lawrence," says that immediately after 
the project of severing the new city from the territory of Andover and Methuen was 
broached, the suggestion was made in many quarters that the town should take the 
name of Lawrence, " as a compliment to Hon. Abbott Lawrence, who had done so 
much for Massachusetts, and this place in particular; " and he continues : — 

"On the 13th of January, 1847, ^ meeting of a considerable number of residents 
took place at the office of the Essex Company, with a view to an understanding in 
regard to the name of the new town, to be embodied in a petition to the Legislature 
for a charter. At the suggestion of Mr. Storrow, the name of Lawrence was agreed 
upon, not, as the newspaper writers had proposed, as a compliment distinctively to 
Mr. Abbott Lawrence, but as a token of respect to a family among the most liberal 
and distinguished in the country. There were then living three members of this 
family, Amos, Abbott, and Samuel. Of these, Abbott and Samuel were among the 
most energetic business men of New England, and both more actively engaged in the 
enterprises here than any others not residents among us. In point of investment the 
family undoubtedly then had as great an interest in the new town as, we might 
almost say, all others combined. There was, therefore, a good if not a sufficient 
reason why the future city should be christened as it was. That it was not the inten- 
tion to distinguish one over another member of the Lawrence family in the name of 
the city, we may refer to the distinct impression, ' S. Lawrence, A. Lawrence,' upon 
a brick in the south-east corner of our City Hall. We leave the reader to define the 
question whether Amos or Abbott, or both, were intended to be complimented in the 
impression, ' A. Lawrence.' There is no question that Samuel, who was then agent 
of the Bay State Corporation, as well as of the Middlesex Mills in Lowell, was 
included in the compliment." 



28 THE ARLINGTON MILLS. 

Mills, the Washington Mills, the Atlantic Cotton Mills, the Pem- 
berton, the Everett, the Lawrence Duck Company, the Russell 
Paper Mills, the Farwell Bleachery, the Monroe Paper Company, 
the Bacon Paper Company, Butler & Robinson, Philips & Kun- 
hardt, the Wright Manufacturing Company, and many others. 
One of the youngest among them, and certainly as remarkable 
as any in its rapid development, is the Arlington Mills. 

As recently as 1830 the site of the Arlington Mills and the 

now densely populated country adjoining it was farming and 

meadow lands. But one house stood there in that 

The first year, although there is a tradition that a saw mill 

orstevll^s' "^^^ located on this spot in the latter part of the 

pond, last century. The north side of the Spicket river, 

in its easterly course from Stevens' pond, was the 

property of Nehemiah Herrick, of Methuen, while that on the 

south of the river belonged to the Sargent estate. At the date 

mentioned, Abiel Stevens began to buy lands along the river 

banks for the purpose of securing water-power to be employed 

in the manufacture of pianoforte cases, keys, and the like. He 

acquired sixty or seventy acres of land, and constructed a 

dam just above Herrick's bridge, by which the old road to 

Tower Hill crossed the river at the point now covered by the 

Arlington pond. 

Mr. Stevens built a factory and began business in 1832, 

^^.^j making cases for Jacob Chickering, the celebrated 

Stevens' pianofortc maker of Boston. In 1848 Mr. Stevens 

factory. . i i • i • 

mcreased nis water-power by purchasmg and de- 
molishing the Charles Ingalls dam, located a quarter of a mile 



THE ARLINGTON MILLS. 29 

above him on the river, and building a new and higher dam 
lower down than his original structure. This dam still remains, 
forming a part of the Arlington Mills dam. 

Mr. Stevens' mill was destroyed by fire in 1834; but he im- 
mediately rebuilt it, and continued in business until 1856, when 
he retired with a competence acquired in an honorable and 
energetic business career. 

Mr. Stevens' sons, B. A. Stevens, C. K. Stevens, and L. E. 
Stevens, established the next enterprise in this mill, 

u sequen ^^^ ^^ manufacturc of fur and wool hats. It did 

enterprises. 

not prove successful, and after two or three years 
was discontinued. 

After a period of idleness, the mill property was transferred, 
in 1863, to Stephen N. Allen, who at once sold it to the Fibrilia 
Manufacturing Company, which undertook the manufacture of 
felted goods. This enterprise was also of brief continuance. 
The following year' the mill was conveyed to the Berkley Mills 
Corporation, and in 1865 to Robert M. Bailey, and by him in 
the same year to the Arlington Woolen Mills. 

The extensive plant of the Arlington Mills began, therefore, 

with the old piano-case factory, which was a wooden building, 

originally one hundred and thirty-five feet long, thirty-five feet 

wide, and three stories high. A very excellent rep- 

"^"^"oTuie '°° resentation of this original woolen mill is presented. 

Arlington The Arlington Woolen Mills were incorporated in 

Woolen 

Mills. 1865 under the General Statutes of Massachusetts, 
with a capital stock of $200,000. The first incor- 
porators were Robert M. Bailey, Charles A. Lambard, Joseph 



30 THE ARLINGTON MILLS. 

Nickerson, and George C. Bosson. Mr. Bailey was the first 
president of the corporation, and the first treasurer was Sum- 
ner Wheeler. 

The corporation began business with the manufacture of 

fancy shirting flannels and woolen felted fabrics. It was 

hardly under way before a fire totally destroyed 

^''■® the mill, in October, 1866. The loss was severe, 

destroys 

the mill, but the proprietors were not discouraged. They 
at once began the erection of a new mill, which 
was finished early in the year 1867. This was also a wooden 
structure, and it is well represented in the picture on the op- 
posite page. 

The mill of 1867, which was torn down in 1888 to make 

way for more modern structures, was a fair specimen of the 

woolen mill of those days, but very different from 

Modern any of the numerous buildings which have taken 

improvements ., , ^j^, , , ^ r , • • 

in factory ^^^ place. The great advance of manufacturmg m 
construction, ^j^g United States is nowhere more strikingly illus- ' 
trated than in the improved buildings in which it 
is now conducted ; and nowhere is this improvement shown 
to better advantage than at the Arlington Mills. 

The new mills of the Arlington corporation are all built of 

brick, and constructed on. the most approved plans of modern 

mill architecture. Throughout each building the 

Slow system of construction which is described as slow 

burning' 

construction, bumiug is rigidly adhered to. The stairways are lo- 
cated in towers, which recur at convenient intervals ; 
and here also are placed the closets for the use of the help. 



00 

ON 







THE ARLINGTON MILLS. 31 

in which the most recent methods of sanitation are utilized. 
Monitor windows adorn nearly every roof, making the rooms 
below as light as the open, while huge windows, set close to- 
gether and extending nearly to the ceiling, allow brick walls to 
exclude as little as possible of the precious daylight. 

The heating of these vast structures is done by means of large 
fans, which blow the air through underground ducts and over 
hot steam coils into the several rooms. Each of the two large 
fans devoted to this purpose is capable of forcing 90,000, cubic 
feet of air a minute through six-foot ducts. The great advan- 
tage of this method of heating is the constant change of air which 
results, thus insuring perfect ventilation. Of course all this is an 
extraordinary advance over the old factory days, when the only 
method of heating was by the closed stove, which compelled the 
breathing of the same air over and over again. The modern 
manufacturer has come to recognize that everything which con- 
tributes to the physical and mental comfort of the operatives pays 
a good return on its cost, and is therefore a good investment, in- 
dependently of all philanthropic considerations. So general has 
been the recognition of this fact, that Colonel Wright says, in 
one of his reports, that the air in our cotton factories is better 
than in our lecture rooms. 

Fire-escapes, fire pumps, hose, and other precautions against 
fire are everywhere found. Fire could make no considerable 
headway in any department before discovery ; and the system 
of automatic sprinklers, in use in all the recently constructed 
buildings where there is considerable machinery, affords an 
additional safeguard. 



32 THE ARLINGTON MILLS. 

The precautions against fire do not end here, by any means. 

About ten years ago a portion of the operatives of the mill were 

organized into " The Arlington Worsted Mills Hose 

The Company," and they constitute an effective fire bri- 

"^fire °" g^de, ready for an instant emergency. The company 

brigade. consists of not Icss than twenty-five members, with 

the Superintendent as presiding officer, and a chief 

engineer who is the master mechanic of the mills. The brigade 

has regular drills, and both hose and hydrants are inspected at 

stated intervals. An officer of the company makes monthly 

inspections, to see that the spanners and hose are in their places, 

the fire pails filled, and the fire pumps in good working order. 

In addition to the fire brigade is a system of fire alarm. 

By pressing a button in the room where a fire may 

"^^^ start, the location of the fire is instantly communi- 

fire-alarm 

system. cated to the signal tower, and from that point the 
number of the room is made known to the members 
of the fire brigade. 

Some other advances in the way of facilities and improve- 
ments may be alluded to in this connection. In 1882 the 
first Edison lights were placed in the mill, — as 
li htin*^ early, probably, as in any New England mill ; and 
the system of electric lighting has been gradually 
extended to the entire establishment. The electricity is sup- 
plied by ten arc and three incandescent dynamos of the most 
modern pattern, and four additional arc dynamos are about to 
be added. At a moment's notice, thousands of brilliant lights 
drive the gathering twilight from every nook and corner. 



THE ARLINGTON MILLS. 33 

The fifty arc lights with which the system began are now 
extended to five hundred and twenty-four arc Hghts, which 
number will soon be increased by two hundred more. There 
a;fe in addition over one thousand two hundred incandescent 
lights in the worsted mills, and five hundred and fifty in the 
cotton mills. 

It is related in the mills that a few weeks after the electric 
lights were introduced, some accident to the machinery com- 
pelled a brief return to gas jets. At once the operatives began 
to complain that they could not see to do their work, and that 
they could not be responsible for its character, with the insuffi- 
cient lighting of gas. So great are our advances, that the old 
methods seem to be utterly inadequate, even before they are 
fairly dispensed with ! 

Another illustration of the gain through electricity appears 

in the utilization of the telephone by the Arlington Mills. 

How they ever got along without it is now the 

The mystery to those whose tireless messenger it has 

telephone 

exchange, bccomc. The mills have their own telephone 
exchange system, and an expert is kept constantly 
busy making the connections for the forty-five telephones that 
connect as many different rooms or departments, each with 
every other, through the central station. It is a matter of a 
few moments' time to send a message to every part of the 
vast establishment. An hour was frequently required to trans- 
mit intelligence that now penetrates anywhere in a moment. 
It is by savings of this kind that great establishments are 
able to constantly reduce the cost of production; for time 



34 THE ARLINGTON MILLS. 

is money, in a mill like this, more literally, perhaps, than any- 
where else in the world. The system of long distance tele- 
phone wires now connects the Boston office of the Arlington 
Mills .with the mills themselves, and with the office of tl^p 
selling agents in New York; so that the treasurer sitting at 
his desk can communicate instantly with either the mill or the 
market. What else electricity has in store for textile manu- 
facture, we can only imagine as yet ; but it is safe to predict 
that before another decade passes, it will have wrought even 
greater changes than those just noted. 

The rebuilding of the Arlington Woolen Mills in 1866 oc- 
curred at a time of great activity in the woolen manufacture 
of the United States. The tariff of 1867 soon after 

The ' 

worsted went into effect. Under this tariff the worsted in- 

maniifacture 1,1, r -i -ji- , 1 

in the dustry, heretofore carried on m this country under 
United great discouragements and with unsatisfactory re- 

Sta.tes. 

suits, promised large rewards to those who were 
bold and enterprising enough to undertake it. 

The Arlington now embarked in the manufacture of 
women's worsted and cotton dress-goods. In April, 1867, the 
capital stock was increased to $240,000. This was 
Worsted doue by marking down the two thousand shares, 
"^^Xst" ^ whose par value was one hundred dollars, to eighty 
made. dollars, and issuing one thousand additional shares 
at the latter value, thus making the total of 
$240,000. The mill was at once equipped with one hun- 
dred and sixty looms, and the necessary machinery for the 
spinning of worsted yarns. For a time the corporation 



THE ARLINGTON MILLS. 35 

encountered great and apparently insurmountable difficulties. 
The manufacture was altogether new in this country, while it 
had been brought to a state of high perfection abroad. The 
experience, the skill, and the capital of the best manufacturers 
of England, France, and Belgium were busy in its develop- 
ment, while ours were sinking money in costly experiments. 
Pioneers less courageous and determined would have been 
disheartened on discovering, as did the proprietors of the 
Arlington Mills at the close of the year 1869, that the finan- 
cial condition of the corporation was such as to 
eorganizaion ^^^^ gj reorganization. But the stockholders met 

necessary. -C^ ts 

the requirements of the situation, and paid into the 
treasury the whole amount of the capital stock, $240,000, to 
make the same good, and still pressed on in the path they had 
marked out. 

In 1867 Mr. William Whitman was elected treasurer of the 
corporation, a position which he resigned in June, 1869, when 
he was succeeded by Mr. B. L. Merrill. But when the capital 
stock of the company was made good, in December of the 
latter year, as stated above, an entire reorganization of the 
management was effected. Mr. Joseph Nickerson, of Boston, 
was elected president, and Mr. Whitman was again invited to 
become its treasurer ; and he still continues in the management 
of the corporation to which he was last elected twenty-one 
years ago. 

Mr. Nickerson continued to act as president until his death, 
which occurred February 29, 1880. He was a man of excep- 
tional business capacity and of marked individuality of char- 



36 THE ARLINGTON MILLS. 

acter. A native of Cape Cod, he took naturally to a seafaring 

life, early rose to the command of a ship, and soon became 

the owner of ships. Later he embarked in business 

capt. jj^ Boston as a ship chandler, and afterwards became 

Joseph 

Nickerson. a manufacturer of cordage and cotton-duck, which 
enterprise he carried on in connection with the 
management of ships. With the decline of American ship- 
ping, Captain Nickerson transferred his capital and enterprise 
to railroading. His success in this new field was so marked 
that at the time of his death he was one of the wealthiest 
citizens of Boston. Under an exterior sometimes rough, Mr. 
Nickerson carried one of the kindest of hearts, and conspicu- 
ous among his virtues were his undaunted courage and his 
devoted loyalty to his friends. He was a man cast in a large 
* mould — one born to command. His was one of those strong 
and forcible natures upon which weaker ones lean in an emer- 
gency, and to whom leadership is naturally and voluntarily 
assigned. 

Captain Nickerson was succeeded in the presidency of the 
Arlington Mills corporation by his son, Mr. Albert Winslow 
Nickerson, who still discharges the duties of that office. 

The work of remodeling the Arlington Mills and increasing 
its productive capacity was warranted by the healthy pros- 
perity that followed the reorganization of the cor- 

The 

enlargement poration. It was cntcrcd upon in earnest in 1871. 
of the New buildings were rapidly constructed and new 

mills. ^ r / 

machinery added, until, in 1877, there were five 
hundred and eight looms in regular operation, producing 



THE ARLINGTON MILLS. 37 

five million yards of cloth annually, and giving employment 
to six hundred operatives. 

In the meanwhile an act of the Legislature, in 1875, had 

changed the title of the company to the Arlington Mills. 

The capital stock of the corporation was in- 

The several crcased to $320,000 iu 1876, and in May, 1877, it 

increases in _ _ 

capital stock, was Still further increased to $500,000. The rapid 
development of the enterprise in subsequent years is 
shown by the several additional increases in its capital which 
have been authorized by the Legislature. In May, 1881, the 
capital stock was increased to $700,000; in January, 1883, to 
$1,000,000; in February, 1887, to $1,500,000; and in March, 
1890, to $2,000,000. The funds secured by these increases in 
the capital stock were utilized in paying for very extensive 
changes and enlargements in the plant, which will be hereafter 
described. The corporation began to pay dividends in 1877, 
and has since continued them semi-annually without interrup- 
tion, the dates of payment being June 30 and December 31. 

The stock of the corporation is divided into twenty thou- 
sand shares, and the stockholders are represented in the 
management by a board of five directors, annually 
Board elected. This board at present consists of Albert 

of 

directors. W. Nickcrson, William A. Russell, George A. 
Nickerson, Charles C. Burr, and William Whitman. 
Unlike the directors of many of our large manufacturing cor- 
porations, those of the Arlington Mills own in their own right 
nearly one-half of its capital stock. Their chief executive 
officer is the treasurer, Mr. Whitman, who is charged with the 



38 THE ARLINGTON MILLS. 

general management of all the affairs of the corporation. Next 

to him in the management is the resident agent. Mr. 

Robert Redford was appointed to this responsible 

'^^^ position in September, 1888, after serving for eight 

executive 

management, ycars as Superintendent of the cotton mills. Mr. 
Redford took charge of the cotton mills at the time 
of their erection, coming to the United States for that pur- 
pose. He had had ten years' experience as superintendent of 
the Reddish Spinning Mills, near Manchester, England. 

The Boston office of the Arlington Mills is located in the 
new Nevins building, 78 Chauncy street, corner Rowe place, 
to which point it was removed from 202 Devon- 
office °^ shire street, on December i, 1890. The Boston 
office of the commission house of Harding, Whit- 
man & Co. is located in the same building. 

The original selling agents of the Arlington Mills was 
the firm of R. M. Bailey & Co., located on Devonshire 
street, Boston, Mr. Bailey being one of the original 
agents^ Stockholders of the corporation and its first presi- 
dent. Mr. William Whitman, the treasurer of the 
mills, was connected with the house of R. M. Bailey & Co. 
at the time, and when the selling agency was transferred, 
in 1869, to John S. & Eben Wright & Co., of Devon- 
shire street, Boston, Mr. Whitman also went to that firm. 
Prior to his connection with R. M. Bailey & Co., Mr. Whit- 
man had been for eleven years with the old firm of J. M. 
Beebe & Co. Wright & Co. retained the agency but a few 
months, this being the period during which the corporation was 



THE ARLINGTON MILLS. 39 

undergoing reorganization. The goods were sold from December, 
1869, to April, 1883, by Lawrence & Co. When the latter 
house succeeded to the business of James L. Little & Co. they 
succeeded also to the agency of the Pacific Mills, and the goods 
of the latter requiring their whole attention, the firm of Brown, 
Wood & Kingman became the selling agents of the Arlington 
Mills. It continued to hold this relation until it went out of 
business, in 1887. The firm of Harding, Colby 
Harding, ^ Qq^ whosc Ncw York office was located at 80 

Whitman 

&co. and 82 Leonard street, then became the sell- 
ing agents of the mills, Mr. Whitman at the same 
time becoming a member of the firm. In June, 1889, Mr. 
Colby died, and in December of that year the firm was dis- 
solved, and the present .firm of Harding, Whitman & Co. 
organized on January i, 1890. 

With this rapid sketch of the origin, the early vicissitudes, 
and the subsequent development of the Arlington Mills, we 
will proceed in another chapter to a more minute description 
of the property of the corporation as it stands to-day. 




III. 



DESCRIPTION OF THE ARLINGTON MILLS. 




T will be interesting to trace more in detail the 
evolution of the Arlington Mills, from the piano- 
case factory, which it occupied in 1865, to the dozen 
magnificent structures, having a floor surface of 
fully twenty acres, in which its - manufacturing is conducted 
to-day. 

The worsted and cotton mills really comprise two distinct 
and separate establishments, the property of the same corpora- 
tion, but each under separate superintendence, with separate 
accounts and pay-rolls, and each independent of the other in 
power and in equipment as well as in location. 

The best impression of the plan of the Arlington Mills, and 

the situation of the several buildings with respect to 

General each othcr. Can be obtained by a study of the iso- 

views of the 

mills. metric picture which forms the frontispiece of this 

volume, and also the engineer's plan, which appears 

on the opposite page. These two illustrations are supple- 



s^ 



&t 




jfi 



THE ARLINGTON MILLS. 41 

mented with views of the worsted plant and the cotton mills, as 
they appear from the hillside on the opposite bank of Stevens' 
pond. This view is as beautiful and inspiring a sight as one can 
encounter in a day's journey. The panorama tells the story of 
the source of New England's material advance, and of her pros- 
perous, contented, and intelligent people. Pretty and extensive 
as these pictures are, they still convey a most inadequate idea 
of the extent of the Arlington Mills ; for the camera of the artist 
can find no point of view that will present all of the buildings, 
which are crowded into a space so compact that they seem to 
grow out of each other. 

Before entering the mill proper, we will introduce our readers 

to the commodious offices of the worsted plant, on Broadway. 

They are three in number, and have been recently 

rearranged and remodeled for the convenience of 

offices ° 

of the their occupants and the expeditious despatch of the 

jjjju multitudinous details of the business. Here we shall 

be welcomed by Mr. Robert Redford, the resident 

agent of the Arlington Mills, and also by Mr. William D. 

Hartshorne, the superintendent of the worsted mill, and the 

assistant superintendent, Mr.- George L. Selden. Mr. Hartshorne 

has been in charge of the worsted mills since 1882, 

superin- comiug into its superintendence after a thorough 

tendent 

Hartshorne. training as a civil engineer, and a previous experi- 
ence in the dress-goods department of the Arlington 
Mills. Mr. Hartshorne is as busy a man as may be found in 
Lawrence, and the various branches of the great worsted mills 
move on like clock-work under his constant oversight. Catching 



42 THE ARLINGTON MILLS. 

him at a moment of unaccustomed leisure, we will accompany 
him in a tour of the worsted plant of the Arlington Mills. 

These buildings, devoted to worsted spinning, weaving, dyeing, 

and finishing, are situated on what was formerly known as 

the turnpike stage road to Concord, New Hampshire, 

Location now knowu as Broadway. The buildings are bounded 

° /. on the north by Chalmers street, and on the west by 

worsted ■' ■' 

iniiis. Stevens' pond. The outlet of this pond, Spicket 

river, runs in an easterly direction through the 

worsted plant, leaving nearly two-thirds of the plant to the 

north of the river, the weave-shed and several other buildings 

being located to the south. 

Superintendent Hartshorne will take us first to the boiler and 
engine houses, in order that we may start on our tour with an 
intelligent appreciation of the motive power required to keep 
the thousands of wheels and pulleys ^nd shafts in motion, that 
in turn give motion to other thousands of spindles and bobbins, 
looms and warping beams, and the whole myriad mechanism 
of the mill. 

The main boiler-house is situated near the center of the yard, 

and was built in 1888. It is located chiefly under- 

house"' ground, an arrangement which permits the coal to 

be delivered to bunkers on a level with the floor of 

the boiler-house, by dumping directly from the yard track 

overhead. 

This boiler-house is 150 by 50 feet in dimensions. It con- 
tains boilers with a nominal capacity of 2,800 horse-power, but 
capable of evaporating with ease 150,000 pounds of water per 



THE ARLINGTON MILLS. 43 

hour, — sufficient to supply all the steam required for power, 
dyeing, finishing, heating, and lighting. Directly over the 
boiler-house has been constructed a two-story building, devoted 
to the machine and carpenter shops, where every facility exists 
for keeping the machinery of the mill in repair without loss of 
time. 

Contiguous to the boiler-house is the engine-house, which 
consists practically of one room, commodious, well lighted, 
and shining with polished brass. This room contains 
house"^' ^^° pairs of large Corliss engines, whose capacity is 
about 3,200 horse-power. In reserve also is a pair 
of Armington & Sims' engines, with a capacity of 500 horse- 
power. One pair of engines, in operation since the building was 
erected, is arranged so that steam can be condensed, either from 
both cylinders or only from one, according to the demands of 
the dye-house for exhaust steam from the other. Indeed, this 
subdivision of the use of exhaust steam can be carried to the 
extent of the use of either end of either cylinder, — one or all 
of them. The dimensions are such that choice can be made 
between the end of a 28-inch cylinder or a 32-inch cyhnder, or 
a multiple of them. 

The weights of some of the parts of these engines convey an 
idea of their size and power. For instance, the main pulley or 
fly-wheels of each pair weighs nearly 84,000 pounds, and the 
two 48-inch cylinders in the new pair weigh 21,000 pounds each. 
The shipping weight of the smallest pair of engines was 200,000 
pounds. 

These fly-wheels are 27 feet in diameter, with faces of 109 



44 THE ARLINGTON MILLS. 

inches and no inches respectively. One of them drives five 
20- inch belts, and the other two 40-inch belts and one 2 5 j^ -inch 
belt. At 6.10 every working morning these beautiful, great fly- 
wheels slowly begin the revolutions, like giants preparing for 
battle, to which thousands of wheels respond like clock-work, for 
the labor of the day. 

The engines and boilers above described supply power only 
for the spinning mills. There is another boiler-house con- 
nected with the weaving department, which contains five boilers, 
of 520 nominal horse-power. The engines which supply power 
for the weaving department are of 450 horse-power. An ad- 
ditional engine of 100 horse-power supplies the finishing depart- 
ment, and another of the same capacity the machine shop. 
There are also numerous other engines, attached to various 
machines, in different departments of the worsted plant, which 
will aggregate 100 additional horse-power. If we add to these 
engines those of the cotton mills, we shall have an aggregate 
capacity of over 5,700 horse- power. 

On Chalmers street, in the northwestern corner of the plot 
we have described, stands the storehouse, constructed in 1886. 
It is somewhat irregular in shape, owing to its pecu- 
storeho^use ^^^** ^ocatiou, but is nearly rectangular, and its dimen- 
sions are 125 by 135 feet. It is six stories high above 
the basement, and possesses an average actual area per floor of 
over 12,000 square feet, with a total floor area of 87,856 square 
feet, and a storage capacity of about 600,000 cubic feet. We 
present a picture of this fine building, and, by way of contrast, 
another picture of the first storehouse occupied by the Arling- 



00 




» ^- 



! i 



THE ARLINGTON MILLS. 45 

ton Mills. The two buildings are typical of the earlier and 
the later manufacturing of the United States. Vast as is the 
floor area of the new storehouse, it must be filled many times 
over to supply the wool which is annually devoured by the 
machinery of the mills. 

Entering this building we find its basement floor crowded 

with goods, packed in cases, and ready for shipment, which 

occurs daily. The Arlington Mills is especially for- 

"^^^ tunate in its transportation facilities, its raw material 

shipping 

facilities, being brought to its very doors, both to the worsted 
mills and the cotton mills, over its own tracks, 
which are extended through its yards, in various directions, 
from the Boston & Maine Railroad. At the cotton mills the 
arrangements are so perfect that the entire business of the mills 
is conducted without the aid of a single team of horses con- 
nected with that mill. The products of both mills are shipped 
daily, in cars provided by the railroad corporation, which are 
sent, without reshipment, all over the country. 

Entering the elevator of the storehouse, we pass story after 

story, in which the raw material is piled, bale upon bale, as it 

comes from the farms and ranches of Ohio, the far 

Wool from West, and still farther Australia. Here also are stored 

all over the 

world. English wools, mohairs from Turkey and the Cape, 
the supply of wool kept on hand being necessarily 
large and varied, to meet the special requirements of the great 
variety of products for which the Arlington Mills are famous. 
It is not a particularly appetizing odor that salutes the nostrils 
on the upward journey through these mountains of wool, — not 



46 THE ARLINGTON MILLS. 

at all suggestive of the beautiful snow-white fiber into which this 
dirty, clotted mass is transformed by the processes through 
which it subsequently passes. Into this storehouse, and out of 
it to the machines, there passes in one year a volume of raw 
wool aggregating nearly 10,000,000 pounds, — a quantity equal 
to one-thirtieth of the entire American clip for 1890. It is more 
than one-third of the clip of our greatest wool-growing State, 
and there are only nine States in the Union which raise an equal 
quantity of wool. 

It will help the reader to realize the volume of wool repre- 
sented by these figures, to state that two hundred mills, each 
using the same weight of wool which the Arlington 

Per capita annually consumes, would work up all the wool 

consumption 

of wool, grown in the world. But the increased capacity of 
the larger mills in this country barely keeps pace 
with the increasing consumption of the American people. 
In 1870 the consumption of raw wool in this country was 7.94 
pounds per capita, making allowance for the home production, 
and all the imported material, whether in its raw state or as man- 
ufactured goods. In 1880 the per capita consumption had 
increased to 8.55, and in the year 1890 it was (^.i"^ per capita. 
There is no country on the globe whose people approximate 
our own, in the quantity of wool they consume in clothing, 
carpets, and all its various forms. As the country grows, the 
United States may become the greatest of wool-manufacturing 
nations, without requiring a market outside her own borders. 

Of the wools which the Arlington finds best suited for the 
fabrics there made, a very large proportion are imported. Ini- 



THE ARLINGTON MILLS. 47 

ported wools are used, not because of any prejudice or objec- 
tion to American wools, but because they possess character- 
istics essential to the satisfactory finish of certain 
^■T grades of the goods, to a degree not found in the 
domestic fleece. The woolen industry proper of 
the country is dependent almost wholly upon the domestic 
wools ; and experience proves them as well adapted for the 
fabrication of satisfactory clothing for our people as any other 
wools grown. 

The manufacturers of wool have, as a rule, cheerfully consented 
to the imposition of a high tariff upon the wools they import. 
Believing in the protective system themselves, and dependent 
upon it for their own success, they have not been disposed to 
deny its benefits to a kindred industry claiming to be equally 
dependent upon the tariff. They believe, also, the proposition 
that that nation is the strongest and most independent which 
not only makes all its own clothing, but grows all the raw mater 
rial required for that clothing. The United States approaches 
more closely to this condition than any other country ; it is the 
only one of the great manufacturing nations that grows more 
wool than it imports. Her manufacturers have been willing to 
thoroughly test the proposition made in behalf of the wool- 
growing industry, that, with proper protection, there can be raised 
in abundance in this country every variety of wool required in 
the manufacture of clothing. Twenty-five years of thorough- 
going protection have shown this broad proposition not to be 
well founded. It is human nature for the farmer to raise that 
variety of wool most certain of a steady market, at prices which 



48 THE ARLINGTON MILLS. 

allow the best profit to himself. The necessities of the manufac- 
turer are of no special concern to him, and as a rule he is not 
familiar with them. Under the operation of the tariff, the volume 
of the domestic clip has greatly increased ; but the number of 
sheep has steadily declined in those parts of the country where 
climate, soil, food, and other conditions are best adapted to the 
raising of superfine wools. The special grades of wool required 
in special manufactures of worsted, are not grown here to-day 
to any greater extent than twenty-five years ago, and these 
wools must continue to be imported. 

This digression occurs at a dangerous point, for we left the 
reader in an elevator. Returning to the storehouse, we mount 
to the top floors, where are located the sorting-rooms, in which 
the process of manufacture may be said to begin. 

Here we find eighty to a hundred men, standing each in his 

stall, with great piles of wool before him, and from six to ten 

baskets at his side. Singularly enough, the sorting 

The sorting. .^ ^^^ ^^ ^^ ^^^ stcps iu the wholc Complicated 

rooms. •■• •■• 

and protracted process of the worsted manufacture 
which must still and always be performed by hand. Such sport 
has modern invention made of language that " manufacture," 
which means to make by hand, has come to mean just the 
reverse, — to make by machinery. 

Everything throughout the mills is planned with a view to the 
greatest economy and the utmost expedition in the 
V Trs^ "^ handling of the material as it passes from one manip- 
ulation to the next in order. From the wool-sort- 
ing room the fiber is carried, after further examination and 



THE ARLINGTON MILLS. 49 

intermixing, to great pipes, through which it is dropped into 
the top story of another building, where it first undergoes a 
process, in a pecuHar machine, for ehminating some of the dry- 
dirt with which it is burdened in its marketed condition. The 
sight of the long rows of barrels of this dirt or manure that is 
extracted from the sorts before any water at all has touched 
them, suggests that the time ought not to be far distant when 
the manufacturer will be relieved of the necessity of buying dirt 
for wool, by its more careful preparation for market. As thus 
partially cleansed, the wool is again shot into the 
e scouring- g^^Q^j-jj^gr department, below. This is a one-story 

room. o r^ ' -' 

building, with a length of 144 feet and an average 
width of 54 feet, which was erected in 1887, at the same 
timp as the main spinning mill. Here the sorts are con- 
ducted to automatic steeping machines, which feed directly 
into the bowls of the scouring machines. From these the 
wool emerges, white, damp, and nearly clean, directly and 
automatically upon the dryers, and from the drying machines 
it is blown by fans to the card-room, without having been 
touched by hand since it left the feeder before the washing 
machines. 

Following the buildings in the order of the rotation of the 

work, we come next to the north wing of the worsted spinning 

mill proper. It is 295 feet long and 100 feet wide, 

^^^^ four stories high, besides basement, with a monitor 

wing. »=> ' ' 

roof, which affords the finest possible light for one 
of the spinning-rooms occupying the two upper stories. This 
wing has a floor area of 143,419 square feet. 



50 THE ARLINGTON MILLS. 

The north wing runs nearly parallel with Chalmers street ; 

while at right angles with it, and nearly parallel with Broadway, 

is the eastern wing, 144 feet long by 100 feet wide, 

^ ^^ erected in 1 890. This new building is properly a 

continuation of the north wing ; for its machinery is 

to be devoted to the continuation of some of the processes which 

begin in the latter. It contains a total floor area of 71,248 

square feet. 

It is impossible to describe the processes to which these 

buildings are devoted, and the machinery employed therein, in 

a manner that will be intelligible to one not familiar 

e worse ^j|-j^ ^^ worstcd yam manufacture, without devoting 

process. .^ ' o 

to the subject more space than is at our command. 
Here is done the carding and preparing, the backwashing, the 
gilling, and the combing, the processes of manufacture necessary 
to the making of the worsted top ;' and the drawing, doubling, 
spinning, twisting, and roving necessary to the manufacture of 
the top into yarn. From the point when the wool enters the 
sorting-room until it leaves the spinning-room ready for weav- 
ing, there are no less than thirty different processes to be passed 
through, each one of which advances the manufacture one step. 
The carding-room of the Arlington Mills is on the second 
floor of the north wing. It contains fifty-eight sets of cards, 

mostly adapted to fine work. Into this room the sorts 
,. ^ are blown by fans from the drying machines, to be 

carding-room. -' .' s> ' 

at once fed upon the carding machines, if they are 
the short-stapled sorts to which the process of carding is best 
adapted. The monster cards absorb the tangled wool in their 



THE ARLINGTON MILLS. 51 

greedy jaws, draw it tenderly upon their various wheels, cylin- 
ders, and rollers armed with sharp teeth, shake from it any re- 
maining dirt or foreign substance, and finally deliver it in the 
form of a dainty white film, which is automatically gathered 
into the card balls, ready for the preparatory processes which 
precede spinning. The best worsted carding-engines were for- 
merly made in England, where many of those in the Arling- 
ton carding-rooms were secured. It is a pleasure to note the 
rapidity with which the American machinery manufacturers are 
meeting the most critical wants of the business in this depart- 
ment. The later purchases of cards are of American build, 
and are found to be superior to the English machines whose 
places they have taken. 

The long-stapled wools are fed into the preparing machines, 
the object of which is to straighten the long fibers, in order that 

the operation of combing may be conducted with 
Guiing, greater facility and with less damage to the staple. 

The preparatory machinery, to which wool not 
carded is subjected, consists of what are technically termed 
*' gill-boxes," constructed so as to draft and open the wools. 
The result of this operation is to form a " sliver," which is more 
or less uneven as it comes from the first gill-box. Five or six 
of these slivers are run into one by the use of a second gill- 
box, with the result of so intermingling them that the deficien- 
cies in one sliver are suppHed by its neighbor. In the meanwhile, 
the drafting operation continues, and the half-dozen slivers are 
finally drawn into one smaller than any of those of which it is 
composed. This operation continues through successive gill- 



52 THE ARLINGTON MILLS, 

boxes, until the fibers, from the continued use of the "fallers" 
and " gills," have become thoroughly separated and parallel 
with each other, and ready for the combing machine, by which 
the straightening process is to be continued, and the knots and 
short fibers removed. The longest-stapled wools, prepared for 
combing without the use of the card, are sent to the Lister 
comber, commonly known as the " nip " machine. 

The short-stapled wools, which have been subjected to the 

carding process in the rooms above, are dropped, through 

wooden pipes to the first story in the form of "card 

"The balls," where the material is first backwashed, in 

combing- 

room. order to cleanse the wool more thoroughly and to 
dampen it so that it will work more freely on the 
combs. Several gillings intervene, and finally the material 
reaches the Noble, or circular comb, the use of which has 
greatly increased since the manufacturers began to utilize short- 
stapled wools for worsted spinning. The equipment of the 
Arlington Mills consists of fifty-three combing machines, most 
of which are of the Noble pattern. 

It has been said of the combing machine that it is one in 

which the power of the capitalist has been exemplified no less 

than the genius of the inventor. Experimental in- 

-^ ventors spent no less than ten million dollars in 

wonderful 

machine, perfecting the three distinct varieties of combing 
machines. The combing machine cost more to 
complete, and yielded more to its designers when com- 
pleted, than any other machine of the century, and it is 
certainly the most perfect piece of mechanism to be found in 



THE ARLINGTON MILLS. 53 

all the range of the textile industries. It is comparatively 
few years since the combing machine was brought to its present 
state of perfection. The first use of the machine in this country 
was in 1854, and our whole enormous industry of niechanical 
worsted spinning, as now conducted, has since been built up. 
It is only within a few years that the American manufacturers 
of textile machinery have undertaken the building of combing 
machines. 

The recent introduction of mechanical worsted spinning is 

illustrated by the fact that there are to-day employed at the 

Arlington Mills men who were formerly engaged in 

"^^^ combing by hand. They are fond of describing the 

hand- 
combers, slow and cumbersome process, and of recalling how 

confident the hand-combers used to be, long after 
the experiments of Lister, and Noble, and Heilmann were 
under way, that no machine could be invented that would suc- 
cessfully supersede hand-combing, and thus deprive them of 
their occupation. They were for a long time confirmed in this 
view by the imperfect product of the first machines in use, as 
compared with the hand-work. 

Mr. John Garden, who has been for many years the wool 
buyer of the Arlington Mills, was a hand-comber in the great 

mills of Sir Titus Salt, at Bradford, prior to his emi- 
john Garden, gration to this country, and he recalls that the 

Lister comber was at work in those mills in 1848. 
It was not until 1853, however, that its use became gen- 
eral. It was in the winter of that year that word was sent 
to the hand-combers that their services would no longer be 



54 THE ARLINGTON MILLS. 

required, and the following spring Mr. Garden came to Amer- 
ica. The hand-combers bitterly resented the final triumph of 
mechanical combing, little realizing how vastly its success would 
increase the number of operatives in the worsted industry. 

The hand-combers' tools were of the most primitive descrip- 
tion, consisting of a pair of combs, one of which was alternately 
held in the hand, while the other was fixed to a post. 
Hand- ^iXid. into it the raw wool, after having been properly 

combing 

described, washcd, oiled, and heated in what was termed the 
comb-pot, was lashed. With the other comb, the 
workman then began the combing "operation, the teeth of one 
comb being made to pass alternately through the tuft of wool 
upon the other, until the fibers became perfectly straight, 
smooth, free, and clear of the "noil," or short wool, which re- 
mained imbedded in the comb-heads. The sliver thus obtained 
was from four to twelve feet long, according to the wool from 
which it was combed. This sliver became the " top " for the 
spinner. Mr. Garden attributes the origin of the word "top" 
to the fact that the product of the hand-comber was 
"Top" wound by him into a roll which took on a shape 

and 

"noils." quite like that of a boy's top, — large above, and 
tapering nearly to a point. But neither he nor any 
one else, so far as we know, has been able to explain in a man- 
ner equally satisfactory the origin of the word "noil." ^ 

From this primitive process to the combing machine, is an ad- 
vance as great as the ingenuity of man ever achieved at a single 

1 Charles Vickerman, in his lecture on " The Woolen Thread," says that the term is 
from the Latin, and means " knotty," or " not do ; " but this is at least doubtful. 



THE ARLINGTON MILLS. 55 

step. It is impossible to calculate how great has been the in- 
crease in productive capacity thus effected, while the effect in 
decreasing the cost of all worsted fabrics has been only less 
marked. Mr. Garden states that the hand-combers were paid 
by the pound of top combed, and that the rate of payment 
ran all the way from fourteen pence per pound of top, where 
Botany wool was used, to two shillings, and even more, per 
pound, where the fine Saxony wools were used. The cost 
of this preliminary process of manufacture thus bore a propor- 
tion to the cost of the raw material which seems almost in- 
credible in these days. 

The "tops," which are the product of the combing machine, 
are taken from the cans to the balling machine, and wound into 

balls weighing four or five pounds each. These are 
of sent to the storage-room, in the basement of the 

building, where they are stored in different depart- 
ments, according to their quality, and left for a while to " season." 
Much of the yarn spun by the Arlington Mills is top or slubbing- 
dyed. That is, the sliver of the partially combed top is made 
into hanks called slubbing, and after being dyed by machinery 
is returned to the comb and recombed, thus straightening the 
fibers that have been ruffled in the process of dyeing. 

Adjoining the wool-washing building, and abutting one end 

of the new spinning mill, stands a brick mill four 

Drawing, 

roving, and storics high, besidcs the basement, io8 feet by 66 
twisting |-gg|. jj^ dimensions, which is devoted to the drawing, 

building. 

roving, and twisting of worsted yarns. One story 
is occupied wholly with machinery for drawing, two stories 



56 THE ARLINGTON MILLS. 

with machinery for roving, and one story with machinery 
for twisting. This building has a floor area of 33,403 square 
feet. 

The object of drawing is to diminish the size of the sHver 

from, say, an inch or an inch and a half, down to an eighth 

of an inch, or so thin that it can be drawn out 

'^^^ into a thread at one pull by the spinning machines. 

drawing 

machines. To effect this result, the slivers are doubled many 
times in order to eliminate irregularities from the yarn, 
and to insure uniformity of weight and texture. The ribbons 
are thus drawn out together to a length equal to the sum of 
their combined lengths. Some half-dozen machines are used in 
this process, all built on the same principle. Each machine has 
two pairs of rollers, one pair receiving and the other delivering 
the slivers, and traveling at different speeds ; thus, if the deliver- 
ers revolve twice as fast as the receivers, the slivers are. doubled 
in length in traveling from one to the other, the increase in the 
length, or the amount of the draft, being in the same ratio as 
the speeds of the respective rollers to each other. 

From the drawing-room, the next advance is to the roving 

frame, the last operation through which the slubbing passes 

before spinning. Roving may be described as a 

"^^^ combination of drawing and twisting, with an excess 

spinning- 

room. of drawing, while spinning is a combination of the 

same processes, with an excess of twisting. Finally, 

having passed the roving frame, the sliver is ready for spinning. 

We follow it back again to the spinning-rooms. They present 

a sight that must be inspiring to every spectator who has any 



THE ARLINGTON MILLS. 57 

appreciation of the poetry of mechanism. It is impossible to 
secure a picture which will graphically portray a spinning- 
room to the eye ; for the sense of infinite motion which fills the 
spectator is necessarily lost. The picture presented herewith 
will, however, convey some impression of the extent and gen- 
eral appearance of one of the worsted spinning-rooms of the 
Arlington Mills. 

The worsted spinning is done chiefly by the cap and flyer 

systems. The new spinning mill will also be equipped with 

machinery for spinning by the French system, so 

called, which has been found to be better adapted, 

spinning. ' -i ' 

on some accounts, to the spinning of the shorter 
staples into the finer numbers of worsted yarns. In the man- 
ufacture of all-wool dress-goods, which the Arlington Mills 
has successfully undertaken in recent years, and to which 
it will devote additional attention upon the completion of its 
new mill, the counts of yarn used increase in fineness very 
rapidly. The fine French cashmeres, now so largely imported 
into this country, involve the use of yarns running between 60s 
and 80s, and in some cases even finer. 

The enlarged facilities of the spinning department of the 

Arlington Mills include 41,916 spindles, of which 31,620 are 

flyer and cap spindles, 4,640 are mule spindles, 

Spindles ^^^ 5,676 are twisting spindles. As measured by 

and their 

product, the past achievements of the mills, this machinery 

is capable of turning out 2,660,000 pounds of 

yarn per annum, of an average number, 42. The average 

number of the yarns spun by the Arlington Mills has 



58 THE ARLINGTON MILLS. 

been gradually increasing in fineness, a fact which testifies 
to the increasing superiority not only of the goods woven 
by the mill itself, but by its customers also. In 1887 the 
output of the worsted department was 1,607,213 pounds, 
and the average number was about 38. The increased pro- 
duction of the mills, of a higher average count of yarn, is 
much greater in proportion than the increased machinery 
capacity, — a fact which proves that the standard productive 
capacity of spinning machinery is variable, dependent very 
largely upon the ability of the management to get the best 
results from a given capacity. 

The method of calculating the sizes of yarn is so little 
known, outside the manufacture, that it may prove interesting 
to the lay reader to state it here. 

The conventional " hank " of worsted yarn measures 560 

yards in length, and the conventional method of 

^°^ designating the size of a worsted thread is by the 

yarn is 

designated, number of hanks that are required to weigh one 
pound ; that is, — 

I hank, or 560 yards, No. i yarn, weighs one pound. 
20 hanks, or 11,200 yards, No. 20 yarn, weigh one pound. 
60 hanks, or 33,600 yards, No. 60 yarn, weigh one pound. 

In two-ply yarns the count is designated by the number 
of hanks which are required to make a pound in the single ; 
that is, 2-60 yarn means that 60 hanks of this yarn in 
the single would weigh one pound ; in the two-ply, a shade 
less than 30 hanks, if the count is made exact in the single, 
owing to the take-up of the twist. 



THE ARLINGTON MILLS. 59 

Woolen yarn is reckoned by runs or cuts, most commonly 
in this country by runs, i,6oo yards to a run; that is, — 

No. I run means that i,6oo yards weigh one pound. 
No. 2 run means that 3,200 yards weigh one pound. 
No. 3 run means that 4,800 yards weigh one pound. 

Cotton is also reckoned by the hank, only in this instance the 
hank measures 840 yards instead of 560; that is, i-20's cotton 
yarn means that 20 hanks of 840 yards each weigh one 
pound. 

This data will help the reader to follow us into a little 

calculation which is curious, even if it possesses no great 

value. The average length of each of the 2,660,000 

A flight pounds of worsted yarn which the Arlington spins 

of the 

imagination, is 23,520 yards, and its total length, when reduced 
to miles, is therefore 35,547,273. To realize the 
meaning of these figures we will suppose some energetic 
Puck to take the contract to lay this thread as a cable 
around the world, wrapping it round and round, a single 
strand at a time, and we will suppose him to secure the 
fastest means of locomotion which we now possess, and to 
travel continuously without stopping, at the rate of fifty miles 
an hour, day in and day out, year in and year out. This 
' contract could not be terminated, making no allowance for 
accidents to our messenger, in less than eighty-one years. 
If we add the year's product of the cotton mills to this calcula- 
tion, we will have a total length of yarn that would reach two- 
thirds of the distance from the earth to the sun. 

With this little flight of fancy we will " return to our 



'60 THE ARLINGTON MILLS. 

muttons," or rather, we will return to our story of what 

happens to the fleece of the mutton in the Arlington Mills. 

At the westerly end of the boiler-house is located another 

building, formerly used for wool sorting and wool 

Twisting^, washing, but now devoted," in its three stories, to the 

^^^and^' twisting and reeling and spooling of worsted yarns, 

spooling, and their examination. This building is io8 feet 

long, 40 feet wide, and has a floor area of 12,648 

square feet. 

Stretching from west to east along the northerly bank of 

the Spicket river are the dye-house buildings, and 

Dye-house, the finishing and packing buildings. These buildings 

nis ing, ^^^ arranged so that by the use of fans the steam is 

packing, very thoroughly removed, and light and air and 

good ventilation furnished. They are of an average 

width of 100 feet, and a total length- of about 400 feet. They 

contain a floor area of 73,317 square feet. 

We cannot pause to attempt any description of the operations 
of the dye-house. This is one of the most important stages 
of the manufacture, and one in which the Arling- 
Dyeing, tou Mills has been particularly successful. The 
corporation maintains a shade-room, where the secrets 
of exact matching are suggested by the black walls, which avoid 
reflected tints. There is also a complete laboratory, where re- 
sults are produced by the experimental handling of dyes which 
are admired in the attire of the well-dressed ladies who walk 
the streets of American cities, and would have been the wonder 
and despair of the ancient alchemists. 



THE ARLINGTOJV MILLS. 61 ' 

A bridge thrown across the river connects the last-described 

building with the brick weaving building, erected in 1879. 

This is one of the model weaving buildings in New 

England. It is but one story high above the base- 

^eave-room. " j q 

ment, in order to avoid the vibration which occurs in 
buildings of several stories. It is 390 feet in length and 160 
feet in width, having a floor area of 1 24,774 square feet, or more 
than two and two-thirds acres. It is light, airy, and roomy. 
The student of the textile manufacture can find in this building 
impressive exemplification of the perfection to which its pro- 
cesses have been brought. The main weave-room contains at 
present 950 looms of various patterns, for various kinds of 
work, — plain, Jacquard, box, broad, etc., — together with 
witch-engines and machines for special work. 

In the basement are 550 additional looms, and with the 
completion of its new buildings the weaving capacity of the 
Arlington Mills has been increased to 1,802 looms. 

In the rear of the weave-room are warping-rooms. Here 

the warp threads, as they are prepared at the cotton 

arping- j^jjjg ^^.^ gg^ |-j hand and by machinery upon the 

rooms. ^ ^ J r 

warping beams in accordance with the pattern for 
which they are designed, and made ready for the looms. 

As we enter the weave-room, a noise like that of Pande- 
monium let loose salutes our ears. The din and clatter of 
a thousand looms in operation at once is something inde- 
scribable. But as we grow used to the noise, we find every- 
thing proceeding with the most perfect precision, and are 
amazed at the variety of patterns that are being woven by 



62 THE ARLINGTON MILLS. 

these machines with a rapidity so astonishing that to fully com- 
prehend it, we must contrast it with the slow process 
of throwing the shuttle back and forth by hand, by 

power loom. " j ^ j 

which all fabrics were woven in the olden times. The 
loom, more than any other machine for textile manufacture 
except the comb, exhibits an automatic precision of several 
complicated motions most nearly approaching the human in- 
telligence. It has been constantly improved, and to so marked 
an extent that the looms which the Arlington Mills have thrown 
out from time to time, because they had grown too antiquated 
for its methods, would equip another weave-room of nearly 
equal size. Among the looms which have thus been cast 
aside are many of English make ; and it is a pleasure to be 
able to testify, in this connection, to the general superiority 
of American-built looms over those of any other country. 

For many years after the invention of the power loom, it was 

deemed impossible to successfully weave the finer worsted 

fabrics, except by hand. As recently as 1870 the 

great maiority of those engaged in this branch of 

weaving-. o •> ■^ o o 

the work at Rheims, the center of the manufacture 
of all-wool worsted dress-goods in France, were hand 
weavers. But the march of events has changed all this ; for 
' mechanical weaving long since reached a perfection such as 
the hand loom cannot attain. There is a greater regularity 
in the product, a smaller waste of material, and a great saving 
of labor, — one weaver in this class of fabrics easily attending 
to two looms, and thus attaining a product many times larger 
than was possible with the hand loom. The power loom is 



THE ARLINGTON MILLS. 63 

worked without muscular effort, dexterity in the repairing of 
broken yarns being the chief requirement of the operative. 
Women are found to do this particular work with a deftness 
which men generally lack. 

From some points of view, the finishing department is even 
more interesting than any of those which have preceded it in 

the manufacture. We now have the cloth all woven, 
department^ but in a condition far from suitable for the market. 

If it is to be piece-dyed goods, that have come from 
the loom " in the gray," as it is called, the dyeing follows 
the weaving. If we glance back at the dye-rooms for a 
moment we shall see mammoth cauldrons, capable of receiving 
a hundred pieces of cloth at a time, and presenting an appear- 
ance almost as weird as that of any witch's cauldron of fairy 
tale. From this uncanny bath the cloth is taken to the finish- 
ing-rooms, where different machines and different processes 
await it, according to the character of the fabric and the nature 

of the finish it is desired to give it. Some of the 
Queer tcchnical names applied to these various processes 

technical 

terms. are peculiar, and they had their origin, like many 
other terms familiar to the manufacturer, in the busi- 
ness itself, indicating the Anglo-Saxon origin of the processes 
they describe. The examination to discover the defects which 
may exist in a piece of cloth is called " perching," and 
the removal of the knots and kinks is " burling." Tenter- 
ing, gigging, crabbing, and napping are among the processes 
that follow, some with some styles of goods, and some with all. 
Singeing is a manipulation which explains itself, although the 



64 THE ARLINGTON MILLS. 

looker-on will wonder how it is possible to pass a fabric over 

a copper plate, heated to a white heat, so rapidly and so 

deftly as to burn from it only the excrescences, leav- 

singeing. jng the fabric itself unscorched and perfect. Washed, 

brushed, steamed, pressed in hydraulic presses, the 

goods are boxed and ready for the market. It has been a long 

journey; and the wool that traveled nine thousand miles from 

Australia, to begin this new trip through a worsted mill, has 

many times duplicated that original journey before it is ready 

for the wearer. To have followed it in this hurried way on its 

trip will serve perhaps to impress the reader with a new idea 

of the wonderful advance in civilization which the modern 

textile manufacture marks. 





IV. 

THE COTTON MILL AND ITS PRODUCTS. 

HE business of the Arlington Mills grew so rapidly 
that the management was early brought face to face 
with the problem of undertaking the manufacture 
of the cotton warps and other cotton yarns required 
in its weaving department, rather than continue to buy and im- 
port them. Many of these yarns were then made in 

The 

manufacture thls country, of course, but as a rule the finer quali- 
°^ ties had still to be obtained abroad. The field was 

cotton yarns. 

one to tempt the growing enterprise of the Arling- 
ton, and in 1880 the construction of the cotton mill was begun. 
The summer of 1881 witnessed the completion of the first 
building, known as Mill No. i, its equipment with machinery, 
and the beginning of production. It was from the start under 
the superintendency of Mr. Robert Redford, now the resident 
agent of the Arlington Mills, who brought from England the 
latest methods in use in that country, and whose skilful guid- 
ance made the enterprise a success from the very beginning. 



66 THE ARLINGTON MILLS. 

This mill is situated in the town of Methuen, just across the 

Lawrence line. It is about one-quarter of a mile distant from 

the worsted mills, with which it is connected both by 

Cotton railroad and by a roadway on land belonging to the 

mill 

No. I. corporation. It is a handsome and substantial brick 
structure, three stories high above the basement, 
three hundred and sixty feet long and ninety feet wide, with a 
floor area of one hundred and thirty-five thousand six hun- 
dred and ten square feet, or more than three acres. This build- 
ing is devoted entirely to the preparing, carding, and spinning 
of cotton yarns. 

The cotton mill is pictured in this volume from two points of 
view, the rear view showing the whole group of the structures 
devoted to the cotton department, and the front view, of the 
main mill only, from which it will at once appear that its pro- 
portions are noble and symmetrical. In all its parts and details 
it is arranged with the same completeness which characterizes 
the worsted mills. 

Cotton Mill No. 2 was constructed in 1885-6. It is located 

immediately contiguous to Mill No. i, on the river Spicket, and 

is connected with the packing-room by a bridge. 

Cotton j^. jg ^Q stories in height, three hundred feet long 

mill 

No. 2. by sixty-one feet wide, which gives a floor space 
of thirty-six thousand six hundred feet. Both 
these mills are equipped, like the worsted plant, with every 
facility for the perfect and expeditious dispatch of work. 
Mill No, 2 is fitted up with special machinery for twisting 
and warping, made both in this country and abroad, and also 



o 

o 
z 

n 
q 

H 
O 




i. 



THE ARLINGTON MILLS. 67 

with the most improved machinery for putting up yarns for the 
market. 

The cotton mills contain 62,000 spindles, of which 50,000 
are spinning spindles and 12,000 twisting and doubling spin- 
dles. Of the spinning spindles, 17,000 are for mule 
"^^^ spinning and 33,000 for ring spinning. The picture 

spinning 

capacity, elsewhcrc presented of the main spinning-room in 
Mill No. I conveys a more graphic idea of its great 
dimensions and general appearance than any figures can do. 
This room is the special pride of the proprietors of the Arling- 
ton Mills, who have omitted from it nothing which science or 
money can provide for producing the best results, under the 
most economical conditions. 

The other floors of Mill No. i are devoted to the various 
preliminary processes of the cotton manufacture. We shall 
not attempt even a cursory description of these processes, or 
of the machinery employed in them. The methods of manip- 
ulating cotton are very similar to those of wool manufacture. 
The machines used, while they differ somewhat in 
Cotton and construction, involve the same principles of mech- 

wool 

machinery, anism. Many inventions, first applied to the manu- 
facture of wool, are utilized in cotton, and vice 
versa. It is impossible to say which branch of the textile 
manufacture owes the most to the other in this respect. 

The obligation is reciprocal, not only between wool and 
cotton, but between all the fibers, whether animal or vege- 
table. Whatever tends to simplify and cheapen the manu- 
facture of one of them, is utilized in the manipulation of all ; 



68 THE ARLINGTON MILLS. 

and it is a remarkable fact that this consanguinity between the 
textile fibers, which is so strikingly illustrated in this inter- 
change and combination, in modern manufacturing. 
No new thing j^^g existcd since civilization began, so far as the pro- 

under 

the sun. ccsses applied to their manufacture are concerned. 
No book records when, or where, or how the dis- 
covery was first made that either animal or vegetable fiber could 
be drawn and twisted into a thread, which in turn could be woven 
into cloth. Wherever investigation has penetrated, there the 
spinning and the weaving are found to have existed. In Egypt, 
flax was the national fiber; in India, cotton; in China, silk; 
in Greece and Rome, wool ; in South America, the hair of the 
llama. Each of the primitive civilizations possessed the art, 
and utilized it upon its indigenous fiber, and none of them can 
be said to have borrowed or inherited it from any other. More 
remarkable still is the fact that this art, as it thus existed 
throughout the world before the dawn of history, is in principle 
the identical art, as we practice it to-day. The sole point of 
difference is the substitution of power and machinery for the 
hand, and the marvelous inventions which have followed in the 
wake of that substitution. The carding machines of to-day 
are simply the hand cards of our ancestors, adjusted to power 
and automatic action, while the ingenious spinning machinery 
about which we have been writing is a direct evolution from the 
distaff and the spinning-wheel. These modern inventions which 
have so transformed the art of spinning and weaving are all 
founded upon the idea which the first sons and daughters of 
Adam understood as well as we. Widely as our textile indus- 



THE ARLINGTON MILLS. 69 

tries of to-day differ from those of the ancients, they are still, 
in their fundamental processes, so like, as to justify the Old 
Testament dictum that there is no new thing under the sun. 

A number of smaller buildings surround the two cotton 

mills, and serve their various subsidiary purposes. There are 

some twelve buildings in all, and they contain a 

Five 

acres of total floor area of 232,772 square feet, or five and 

^""^ one-third acres. The general location of these build- 
room. 

ings, with respect to each other, will be readily 
apprehended by consulting the plan of the mills already 
referred to. 

At the northwesterly part of the plant, and situated in a 

bend of the Spicket river, is located the storehouse for cotton, 

122 feet by 45 feet, three stories high, having a 

'^^^ total area of 24,185 square feet, and storage 

cotton 

storehouse. Capacity of 276,000 cubic feet, equal to five 
thousand bales of cotton. This quantity is about 
equivalent to one year's supply of cotton for the Arlington 
Mills. It is the rule of the management to procure its entire 
supply of domestic cotton at about the same time each year, 
and while the choicest selections are still in the market. The 
advantage of this course is obvious in a mill where special 
attention is devoted to the spinning of superfine yarns of a 
uniform quality. 

East of the cotton storehouse stands the mixing-house, a 
building of two stories, 62 by 47 feet, with a total floor area of 
4,470 square feet. The second story of the mixing building is 
on a level with the third story of the storehouse, and con- 



70 THE ARLINGTON MILLS. 

nected with it by a bridge. Her the bales are opened, and 

the cotton undergoes the first manipulation preparatory to 

its manufacture. The cotton is dropped from 

"^^^ this room to the mixing-room below, through 

mixing- 
room, holes in the floor. The latter room has a capacity 

of three hundred bales, and the cotton moves 
thence to the picker-house, a building east of the mixing- 
house, consisting of one story and basement, each 48 by 66 
feet, and having a floor area of 8,284 square feet. Here 
the cotton encounters its first experience with machinery, in 
the preliminary process of cleaning, preparatory to the cards. 
Attached to the southeasterly end of the main cotton mill 
is, first, a room 48 by 36, with an area of 4,479 square feet, 
containing a pair of Corliss engines of 500 horse-power, and an 
adjoining room in which is located a Green engine of 360 horse- 
power. The dimensions of the cylinders of these 
Engine-room engiucs are 23 by 48. East of the engine-room is 

and 

boiler-house, the packiug-room, 52 by 45, and south of them 
both is the boiler-house, 102 by 42 feet, containing 
ten boilers, seven of which are five feet in diameter, and three 
of them six feet in diameter by sixteen feet in length. 

East of the picker-room we find a shed which is utilized as 
a continuation of the card-room. In this building are placed 
125 English-built revolving top-flat cards, machines which pos- 
sess a remarkable capacity for the rapid carding of cotton, and 
are also distinguished from the carding-engines they haye 
superseded by their apparatus for the automatic cleansing of 
the card clothing. 



THE ARLINGTON MILLS. 71 

It is an historical fact, worth noting here, that the Arlington 

Mills was the first establishment to introduce, to any extent at 

least, the revolving top-flat card in the cotton man- 

The 

revolving ufacture of the United States. Mr. Redford had 
top-flat gggj^ them in operation in England, and noted their 

card. 

great superiority over the ordinary cotton-carding 
engine. Shortly after coming to this country to take the super- 
intendency of the Arlington cotton mills, he introduced this ma- 
chine, and his example has since been followed by many of the 
large cotton-spinning establishments on this side of the water. 
There are now several thousand of them in operation here. 

North of the main mill, and separated from it, is a small 
building, 31 feet by 23, used for the storage of combustible 

waste. All the waste accumulated by the Arlington 
Waste. Mills, both in the worsted and the cotton mills, is 

sold. No waste is utilized, even in the lowest grades 
of yarns which are here manufactured. This waste, the quan- 
tity of which is necessarily large, is utilized by others in the 
manufacture of carpet yarns, batting, etc. 

West of the southern end of the main cotton mill is another 
smaller building, 32 by 20, where oils are stored, and where is 
located also the needling-room, a very interesting spot to peo- 
ple of a mechanical turn of mind. The Arlington Mills makes 

all its own repairs, and not the least important 

Ten 

million branch of the establishment is that devoted to the 
needles repairing of combing-needles. It is estimated that 

a year. r fc. b 

no less than 10,000,000 needles a year are consumed 
in the repair of the comber cylinders and the top combs. 



72 THE ARLINGTON MILLS. 

This statement does not help to answer the standing inquiry as 
to what becomes of all the needles ; but it does reveal some- 
thing of the infinitude of small details which goes to make up 
the routine conduct of a great manufacturing establishment. 

North of the new twisting mill is a small building, 40 feet by 

34 feet, in which the office is located. On entering it we shall 

probably find the superintendent, Mr. George W. 

Superintend- Xowne. Mr. Towne was trained in the Arlington 

ent 

Towne. cotton mill, and succeeded Mr. Redford as superin- 
tendent, in 1889. He will be glad to show us about 
*the mills and explain the processes of manufacture. 

Last year the cotton mills consumed 2,370,810 pounds of 
cotton, and spun 1,654,866 pounds of yarn. The average 
number of these yarns was 42. 

The product of the cotton department, like that of the 
worsted mills, is of two kinds. All the warps that are required 
by the worsted mill in the manufacture of cotton-warp dress- 
goods are prepared at the cotton mill; but as the spinning 
capacity of the latter is much greater than the wants of the 
worsted mills, the company is in a position to supply the trade 
with cotton yarns in various forms. 

Since its cotton department got fairly under way, the Arling- 
ton Mills has made a specialty of the manufacture of fine 
combed and carded yarns for the trade. In this re- 
A new spect it inaugurated a new branch of manufacture in 

manufacture 

started, this country. We believe its only predecessor in the 

manufacture of superfine sale yarns in this country 

was the Hadley Company, at Holyoke. Up to 1881, when this 



THE ARLmCTON MILLS. 73 

feature was started, the great bulk of the manufacturers using 
fine cotton yarns were compelled to supply their wants by 
importation. This was a disadvantage in many different ways ; 
there was always a considerable interval of delay between the 
sending of an order and the receipt of the yarns, and there 
was always a risk of not securing exactly what was needed. 
A great forward step in American manufacturing was taken 
when the Arlington Mills was equipped to supply, on short 
notice, cotton yarns of any character or quality that might be 
ipequired. 

That statement means much more than at first appears, as the 

reader will better appreciate when we add that there are some 

three hundred varieties of cotton yarns on the ArHng- 

Three tou Catalogue and trade lists, which are regularly 

varieties made there. The necessities of their customers have 

of yarn, called for all these forms of yarn, and the machinery 
has accordingly been provided. Some details of 
the varieties of yarn will prove interesting. The great number 
of these varieties is possible, because of the double variation 
which occurs, first in the count of the yarn, and, secondly, in 
its quality. 

Six wholly different classes of yarns are made at the Arling- 
ton Cotton Mills. An enumeration of these classes will natu- 
rally begin with single-warp yarn. This is made in 

Single. fQj.|-y different sizes and qualities, from No. lo to No. 

warp 

yarn. 8o, inclusivc. This range of varieties covers every 
requirement of the cloth manufacturer where single 
yarns alone are used. 



74 THE ARLINGTON MILLS. 

If two-ply warps are wanted, there are no less than fifty 

forms or varieties from which to select. The range 

Two-py j-mis all the way from 2-20's to 2-1 40's, inclusive, 

yarns. •' -r ^ / 

which covers the field for a useful warp for any 
make of textile fabric. 

Another branch of the business of this mill touches the 
cloth manufacturer closely, and that is the making of loom 

harness twine. The product of the loom, the char- 
^^^ acter and quality of the cloth produced, depend in 

very large degree upon the quality of the harness 
employed. When the Arlington Mills began to make har- 
ness twine, in 1882, the manufacturers of loom harnesses were 
paying exorbitant prices for a poor quality of twine, one small 
mill practically controlling the twine business. 

It is related that this mill adopted a decidedly novel method 
of keeping the market firm when it was in danger of becoming 
overstocked. The plan was to stop the mill and take the 
help on a fishing excursion. If the harness-maker happened 
along, he must await the return of the party with what grace 
he could. The Arlington Mills undertook the manufacture 
of harness twine at the solicitation of both the harness-makers 
and the cloth-makers, and they have since continued it to 
the entire satisfaction of both interests, and not without 
advantage to the reputation of the mills ; for the loom har- 
nesses now made, at a reduction of thirty per cent, in the cost 
of the twine, involve an additional and more important saving 
to the weaver, for the harnesses last twice as long as they 
formerly did, doing better work all the time. 



THE ARLINGTON MILLS. 75 

A fourth important branch of the products of the cotton 

mills is three and four ply thread, and also six cord. This 

is made in every size and quality used on sewing 

Three and machincs, and supplied to the thread spoolers, who 

four 

ply thread, put it Up in all colors for home use or manufactur- 
ing purposes. The Arlington machinery has been 
especially selected with reference to this class of work, which 
requires a smooth, clean, even, strong yarn, every yard of 
which must pass through the eye of a needle. 

Still another specialty of the cotton mills are the fine 

yarns used in the fabrication of plushes, both silk 

and velvet and cotton, and also in velvets. These yarns are 

^^'^^* supplied in every number and quality known to 

the business. 

Still another requirement, of comparatively recent origin, is 
yarn for electrical purposes, for winding the copper 

Electrical . rj^-, -n i c l. • j_ • 

Wire. Ihe mills also manuiacture seme twines 

yarn. 

adapted to the wants of those who require a strong, 
smooth twine for fishing nets and seines. 

In a word, these mills are equipped to make yarns of every 
description, put up in any form required by the textile manu- 
facturer, either filling or warp yarn, colored or 
The raw gray, on spools or on beams, ready for the shuttle 

material 

used. or the loom. The range of the manufacture is 

shown by the fact that its products include the 

twine of which the harness is made, the yarns by which the 

loom is fed, and the thread by which its product is converted 

into clothing. In the manufacture of these various yarns the 



76 THE ARLINGTON MILLS. 

Arlington uses many varieties of cotton, — Allen seed, Peeler, 
Carolina, and Florida Sea Island, Egyptian, and Mississippi 
Egyptian, according to length of staple and other qualities 
required. The Peeler cotton is utilized in carded yarns, 
while the Sea Island, with a staple varying from one and three- 
fourths to two inches in length, is combed and spun into 
yarn of superior grades. 

Some idea of the number of processes necessary to make 

one of these yarns, and the number of doublings required 

to make it even, can be very easily conveyed to 

Thirty-two ^j^g reader. A two-hundred-yard spool of No. 50 

million 

times. six-cord thread has been doubled and drawn up- 
wards of 32,000,000 times between the picker lap 
and the finished thread. It will help the reader to under- 
stand how this can be possible, when we add that a single 
pound of Egyptian cotton has been spun to a length of 
238 miles and 1,120 yards. 

It has been stated that the consumption of cotton per 
spindle in the American mills in the year 1825 averaged 
about one hundred and forty pounds per annum. The 
change that has since occurred in the manufacture may be 
illustrated by the fact that the average annual consumption 
per spindle in the Arlington Mills was about forty-eight pounds 
in 1889. That means that the mill is spinning yarn three 
times as fine as the average yarn spun in the country in 
1825. If account be taken of the greater rapidity with 
which the modern spindle revolves, it easily means four 
times finer. 



THE ARLINGTON MILLS. 11 

We are now spinning cotton yarns in the United States qf as 

fine numbers as are produced at Manchester, England, and in 

time we shall supply all the quantity of the finer 

New England numbcrs that we consume. Naturally, the machin- 

and the 

South. ery employed upon the finer numbers is mostly 
located in the New England States, and will continue 
indefinitely to be thus located. By the census of 1880, the 
average number of the cotton yarn spun in the whole country 
was 28.56, while in the New England States the average num- 
ber was 30. In the Middle States the average number was 
25.4; in the Western States it was 13.6; and in the Southern 
States it was 13. These statistics supply all the answer neces- 
sary to the opinion — quite freely expressed in recent years — 
that the cotton manufacturing industry is drifting from New 
England into the Southern States. The spinning capacity of 
the South has largely increased, and will, no doubt, continue to 
increase ; but it is not an increase which takes place at the ex- 
pense of New England. The coarser cottons used by the South- 
ern people will more and more be spun and woven on her own 
territory, and in immediate contiguity to the cotton 
New England plantations. But it will be many years yet before 

spins fine 

yarns. the South will sedously attempt competition with 
the New England mills in the spinning of the finer 
numbers and the weaving of the finer fabrics, such as lawns 
and dress-goods. The increased consumption of our people — 
whose numbers grow at the rate of a million and a quarter a 
year — will keep the mills of both sections busy, without inaug- 
urating anything like direct competition between them. New 



78 THE ARLINGTON MILLS. 

England manufacturers have, in fact, more to fear from their 
own number, so rapidly have they been increasing their facil- 
ities of recent years. It is believed that the 10,000,000 spin- 
dles which existed in 1880, by the census of that year, have 
increased to 15,000,000 in 1890; and of this increase, notwith- 
standing the great growth in the South, New England has un- 
doubtedly secured the share necessary to retain her former 
preeminence as a cotton manufacturing center. 

We find an interesting confirmation of the views here ex- 
pressed, in a letter written just forty years ago, by Hon. Amos 
Lawrence, to Robert Barnwell Rhett, of South Carolina. Mr. 
Lawrence anticipated the time when South Carolina would spin 
her own cotton. He looked to see that time come within ten 
years, — he was writing in 1849 ; and if he was over-sanguine, 
it was because he could not anticipate the terrible ordeal 
through which the South was to pass, before it could attain 
to industrial conditions under which it would be possible to 
duplicate, in that section of the country, the manufacturing 
enterprises of New England. With a full understanding of the 
manufacturing situation in his own State, Mr. Lawrence wrote : 
" We of Massachusetts will gladly surrender to you the manu- 
facture of coarse cotton fabrics, and turn our industry to 
making fine articles. In short, we could now, if you are ready, 
give up to you the manufacture of coarse fabrics, and turn one- 
half our machinery into spinning and weaving cotton hose ; and 
nothing will help us so much as specific duties. The whole 
kingdom of Saxony is employed at this moment in making 
cotton hose for the United States, from yarns purchased in 



THE Arlington mills. 79 

England, and made of your cotton. How much better would 
it be for you and for us to save these treble profits and 
transport by making up the cotton at home ! Think of these 
matters, and look at them without the prejudice that prevails 
so extensively in your State." The United States did not 
act upon Mr. Lawrence's judgment, with respect to specific 
duties upon cotton hosiery, until 1890, and in consequence a 
large proportion of the cotton hose worn by the American 
people has continued to be imported down to this time. 

Our growth of fifty per cent, in a single decade, in the other 
branches of the cotton manufacture, finds no parallel in any sim- 
ilar period of the history of Great Britain. Indeed, 
The increase ^j^g official rctums of that couutry show that there 

in 

spindles, was but slight gain in the number of her spindles 
for a period much longer. In 1874 the spinning 
spindles reported in England, Ireland, and Scotland num- 
bered 37,515,000, and in 1889 this number had only grown 
to 40,511,000. An increase of fifty per cent, in 

The spinning q^j- gpiudlcs. In ten years, is, therefore, to be con- 
capacity of 
Great Britain, trastcd with an increase of but nine per cent, in 

Great Britain in fifteen years. It is necessary, 

however, to take account of the fact that the capacity of 

spinning machinery has greatly increased during the interval, 

so that the figures are not altogether a fair test of the rate of 

increase, either in Great Britain or in this country. They serve 

to prove what we know in other ways, that the percentage of 

the world's cotton crop manufactured in this country increases 

regularly, and at a rate most gratifying to those who believe 



80 



THE ARLINGTON MILLS. 



that we are as capable of manufacturing all the cotton we con- 
sume, as we are of growing it.^ 

The experience of the mills which have engaged in the 

spinning of the finer cotton yarns has satisfactorily disposed 

of the claim that there are atmospheric and cli- 

mosp enc j^g^^j^, conditions, peculiar to this country, which 

conditions. ' r j ' 

prevent our attaining results equal to those reached 
in England. Undoubtedly, the conditions are frequently more 
trying; they embrace extremes of heat and of cold from 
which others are exempt. But so far as these or other con- 
ditions, such as excessive electricity in the air, perceptibly 
affect the manufacture, it has been found a simple matter 
to overcome them by spraying apparatus, which will exactly 
secure any degree of atmospheric humidity which may be 
desired. 

1 The United States now consumes in its cotton manufactures between 30 and 33% per 
cent, of its annual production of the fiber, and the proportion is slowly but steadily increas- 
ing. Prior to 1840 more than three-fourths of our production was consumed in foreign 
mills, but our manufacturing interests have increased by a little more rapid ratio than our 
production. The following table presents, in condensed form, the average production and 
exportation, by decades, from 1841 to 1880: — 



1841-50 
1851-60 
1S65-70 
1871-80 
1881-88 



Period. 



Production. 



Pounds. 
1,013,706,315 
1,656,207,661 
1.297.74S.903 
2,iS3ii74.ii3 
3,084,627,890 



Exportation. 



Pounds. 

739,182.69s 
1,118,106,790 

860,437,420 
1,493,829,284 
2|083,339,412 



Per cent, 
exported. 



72.9 

67-5 
66.3 
68.4 
67.S 



THE ARLINGTON- MILLS. 81 

In the equipment of her cotton mills and in the quality of 

their products, New England may now fairly claim an equality 

with Old England. If she cannot manufacture so 

New England cheaply, it is because she uniformly pays higher 

and 

Old England, wagcs to all classes of operatives in her mills. While 
that remains a fact. New England will not crowd 
Old England out of the foreign markets she has so laboriously 
cultivated for a century, but she will find an ever-increasing 
field for her capital and enterprise in supplying a home market 
which no other nation can equal, and which ought to be 
sacredly guarded in the interests of all classes of our people 
and all parts of our country. 




V. 



THE WORSTED MANUFACTURE IN THE UNITED STATES. 




EFORE entering upon a description of the worsted 
products of the Arlington Mills, it will be interesting 
to glance briefly at the history of this particular 
branch of textile manufacture, which, although 
among the most recent, has already grown to extraordinary 
dimensions abroad, and is rapidly advancing to the 
Historical, front rank, among the products of wool, in the 

United States. 

Throughout this book we have used the expression "wool 

manufacture" as indicative of all methods of fabricating woolen 

fabrics, although we have been dealing solely with 

Woolens ^j^g processes commonly known as the worsted man- 

and 

worsteds, ufacturc. Notwithstanding the fact that a United 

States Court and a jury of twelve American citizens 

solemnly decided, in a trial which took place in New York in the 

spring of 1890, that a worsted cloth is not a woolen cloth, it 

nevertheless remains the fact that a worsted cloth is made of 



THE ARLINGTON MILLS. 83 

wool, that many of the processes are identical with those em- 
ployed in making all other cloths, and that the variations which 
occur in the manufacture of cloths commercially known as 
woolens are as marked, particularly in the final process, as the 
variations which occur between woolens proper and worsteds 
proper. For instance, there is a species of cloth popularly 
known as Jersey cloth, which is not woven upon the loom at 
all, but knitted upon knitting machines, very much as shirts 
and drawers are knitted. But it is a woolen cloth for all that : 

it belongs to the great family of cloths, being one 
famn" species of the genus, just as worsteds are another 

species, and just as there are different groups of 
worsteds for men's wear, and also of dress-goods for women's 
wear, between which there are almost as many points of 
difference as there are between woolens and worsteds. 
For instance, there are worsteds made of long stapled wool 
which is prepared and combed, worsteds made of short wool 
which is carded and combed, and worsteds made of wool of any 
length, which is carded only. It is often impossible to tell by 
which one of these three methods a particular worsted yarn has 
been made; and yet one of the methods in its preliminary 
process is identical with that of woolen yarn manufacture. 
Nature divides her grand groups into different species, 
which differ greatly in their characteristics, but have certain 
points of organic resemblance; and in much the same 
manner the manufacture of cloth is divided into its different 
groups, which have one common, invariable, and organic 
resemblance to each other, in that the chief material out of 



84 THE ARLINGTON MILLS. 

which they are all fabricated is wool from the back of the 
sheep. 

Bearing this general resemblance in mind, it is not difficult 

to point out the distinction between woolen fabrics, so called, 

and worsted fabrics, so called. It comes from the different 

treatment to which the wool is subjected in the pro- 

woo°irns ^^^^ °^ manufacture. Of the two processes, that of 

and worsted manufacture is much the more complicated 

worsteds ~ . . , , 

differ. aria expensive, particularly in the earlier stages, 
which have to do with the spinning of the yarn for the 
loom. The woolen yarn is carded and spun on a mule, with few 
intermediate manipulations. We have seen in our trip through 
the Arlington Mills that these intermediate processes are very 
numerous and delicate, in the spinning of the worsted yarn. 
Their introduction produces a yarn quite different, in its general 
appearance and characteristics, from the woolen yarn. While 
this difference is perfectly apparent to' the eye, it will most 
readily be understood by subjecting them both to microscopic 
examination. Placing a woolen yarn under a glass, we shall find 
it composed of a mass of tangled fibers, interlocked and inter- 
lacing with little or no system, loosely associated together and 
lacking in tensile strength. A worsted yarn will be found, 
upon a like examination, to be composed of fibers of wool 
which run parallel with each other, and are closely twisted into a 
strand which is comparatively smooth and comparatively strong. 
This difference between the two yarns is primarily created by 
the use of the comb and the gill-box, machines unknown to the 
wo'olen manufacture proper. The comb, as we have previously 



THE ARLINGTON MILLS. 85 

seen, is so constructed as to lay the long fibers of wool parallel 
with each other, eliminating the short fibers, called the noils, 
which are all retained in the woolen yarn. The short fibers 
must be gotten rid of, in worsted spinning, prior to the subse- 
quent processes of drawing, whereby the long fibers are grad- 
ually drawn into a thread which possesses a uniform thickness 
and a uniform strength. 

The difference between a woolen and a worsted yarn is not 
confined to the operation of the comb alone. The whole 
process of making a woolen thread is fundamentally different 
from that which we have seen applied in worsted. As Vicker- 
man has described it, worsted spinning is a series of processes 
continuously following each other, while woolen spinning is a 
compound process intermittently carried on. There is no 
drafting in woolen. The woolen sliver, after leaving 
the last carding engine, — called the condenser in 

yarn. *» ° ' 

England and the finisher here, — is wound at once 
upon bobbins attached to the mule. In this machine 
the spindles have a compound motion of revolving and 
receding simultaneously in progress, whereby the sliver is 
drawn and wound. This operation completes the woolen 
thread. It is a soft, fluffy, fringy yarn, in which the longer 
fibers have gravitated to the core, and the shorter fibers con- 
stitute a covering. Such a yarn requires very different treat- 
ment from the worsted yarn, both in the weave and the finish. 
Instead of the compact weave that distinguishes a worsted 
fabric, the woolen fabric, as it comes from the loom, is loose, 
open, rough, and must be thoroughly fulled to become a wear- 



86 THE ARLINGTON MILLS. 

able cloth. The felting constitutes the final difference between 
the woolen and the worsted cloth. While the felting property- 
is not eliminated from a worsted, it is so minimized that in a 
worsted fabric, such as a diagonal or corkscrew, we have the 
characteristics of the weave distinctly visible. 

The method of making yarn known as woolen, as distin- 
guished from worsted, was exclusively employed in the mills of 
this country for more than half a century after 
^"'' the founding of our textile manufactures. By 

early 

mills. this process were made a great variety of fabrics 
commonly worn by the people, and including 
broadcloths, doeskins, twills, flannels, tricots, beavers, and like 
goods. The wonder is, however, that our manufactures of 
wool were so long confined to the woolen form ; for early 
in the century the worsteds became popular in Europe, and 
before any were made in this country the worsted manufacture 
had nearly equalled that of woolens, ■ both in England and 
France. 

In the production of the almost infinite variety of fabrics 

included in the general description of worsted dress-goods for 

women's wear, France undoubtedly stands at the 

The French j^ead of the manufacturing nations — not, perhaps, in 

worsted 

manufacture, the quantity of these goods manufactured, but cer- 
tainly in quality and in variety. Although we know 
of the existence of the worsted manufacture in England as far 
back as the records of her industry extend, and although the 
very name of the product is thought to be derived from the 
name of a town in Norfolk, where a colony of spinners from 



THE ARLINGTON MILLS. 87 

Flanders settled in the time of William the Conqueror, yet the 
French may be called the originators of the modern worsted 
manufacture as applied to the lighter fabrics adapted for female 
apparel. They not only originated the most beautiful and 
popular forms of these fabrics, but they continue to carry on 
their manufacture with the most conspicuous success, attaining 
a fineness and perfection of texture, and a beauty and novelty 
of design, which are the wonder and the envy of other coun- 
tries. The wonderful fecundity of the French intellect in the 
invention of graceful combinations of design and color finds in 
this industry an unlimited field. 

The fabrics of combed wool for which Rheims was so famous 

for centuries, — the says, serges, and tanimins, — disappeared 

with the introduction of the Spanish blood into the 

Rheims. French sheepfolds. As early as 1811 an obscure 
workman of Rheims, Dauphinot Palloteau, first made 
from the soft and long wool of the Rambouillet sheep the 
most unrivalled of modern woolen fabrics, — the French 
merino; and at an even earlier date the ingenious manu- 
facturers at Roubaix had made a world-wide reputation for the 
excellence of their stuffs. The great development 

Roubaix. q{ ^j^jg branch of industry dates from the time when 
the utilization of the short-fibered wools of the 
merino blood was successfully inaugurated. Until the early 
part of this century, the long-stapled wools, like those of 
the English mutton sheep, were regarded as the only comb- 
ing wools ; and yarns made of such wools had never been 
used in cloths for men's wear, but were utilized only in stuffs. 



88 THE ARLINGTON MILLS. 

or thin, unfelted fabrics, such as dress-goods and coat 
linings. A number of minor improvements in machinery- 
contributed to the change, but the revolution was completed 
and perfected when Josue Heilmann, an Alsacian inventor and 
manufacturer, succeeded, after many trials and failures, after 
alternating hope and despair, in working out a method of me- 
chanical combing adapted to the short fibers of merino wool, as 
'well as to the long staple formerly regarded as exclusively 
combing wool. M. Alcan, the leading French authority, while 
he lived, on the textile industries of that country, 
^^^ spoke of this invention as one by which " the means 

quoted. >^ •' 

of fabrication were so ameliorated, in the short 
space of a quarter of a century, that the spinning of merino 
wools attained a fineness and regularity once impossible with 
the best hand-spinning. The machine turned out lengths 
of yarn 200,000 meters to the kilogramme, from a kind of 
wool which twenty-five years earlier would scarcely have pro- 
duced 50,000 meters." From the time of this invention the 
distinction between woolens and worsteds gradually ceased to 
be due in any necessary degree to a difference in the character 
of the wool employed, for thereafter it became possible to 
comb almost any wool, however short the staple; and in 
like manner the long wools of English origin, called the comb- 
ing wools, are now used indiscriminately in the manufacture of 
carded fabrics. 

To the French is due the credit of the first manufacture 
of all-wool mousselines de laine, and also of the cotton- 
warp. The first fabrication of the latter occurred at Rou- 



THE ARLINGTON MILLS. 89 

baix, about 1831, and it was quickly copied at Bradford, 
in England, where more of these goods have since 
been made every year than anywhere else in the 

warps. ' -' •' 

world. Mr. E. R. Mudge, United States Com- 
missioner at the Paris Exposition of 1867, was greatly im- 
pressed with the evidences he found there of the textile 
ingenuity of the Roubaix manufacturers. " For 
uoted ^^ ^^^ ^ century," he said, in his admirable report 
on the manufactures of wool at that exposition, 
" the industrial life at Roubaix has been one series of enter- 
prises and happy experiments. Its dominant idea has 
been to adapt fabrics of luxury to popular consumption, by 
combining the best taste and highest excellence with the 
lowest possible price. With this idea it has constantly varied 
its materials and styles, combining wool with cotton, with silk, 
with mohair, with flax, but in all the economies of production 
preserving a grace of decoration and sobriety and harmony of 
colors which take from cheapness all its vulgarity." 

Mr. Mudge's observations at the Paris Exposition suggested 
to him, on his return to this country, the use 
Worsted of the short-stapled merino wools of domestic 
^"firsT^ growth, in the manufacture of worsted suitings for 
made. men's wear.^ He entered upon this new enterprise 
with characteristic energy and skill, at the Wash- 
ington Mills, of which he was then the selling agent. His 

1 John L. Hayes gives the following account of the origin of Mr. Mudge's enterprise : 
"In 1868, my friend, Mr. R. M. Montgomery, then president of the Ohio Wool-Growers' 
Association, sent to me, at Boston, an entire fleece of unusually long Ohio merino wool. 



90 THE ARLINGTON MILLS. 

success was so marked that others quickly followed him into 
this new and promising field, and to-day many of our largest and 
best mills are engaged in the fabrication of a great variety of 
worsted cloths, which, in originality of design, in durability, 
in fineness of texture, and in price, compare favorably with the 
products of the most famous foreign looms. 

that I might bring it to the attention of practical manufacturers. I kept the fleece in my 
office many months. I repeatedly showed it to manufacturers, but they seemed to take 
but the slightest interest in it. One day, when the fleece had become so full of moths that 
I was upon the point of throwing it away, Mr. E. R. Mudge, who had been a com- 
missioner at the Paris Exposition of 1867, and had been much impressed with the worsted 
cloths, which, for the first time, had been exhibited there, and were utterly unknown in this 
country at that time, came to my office to inquire if any wool suitable for making such 
cloth was grown in this country. Upon his description of the cloths, I at once said that 
they were made of merino combing wool, and pointed out to him Mr. Montgomery's fleece, 
assuring him that there was an unlimited supply of such wools in this country. The next 
day an expert was sent by Mr. Mudge to examine the fleece ; and, upon his report, orders 
were sent to France for combing machinery by the Washington Mills, of which Mr. Mudge 
was a director and ■ the selling agent. In the course of a few months the first merino 
worsted coatings made in the United States were turned out by the Washington Mills, and 
were sold in the market as French goods. This establishment succeeded so well in the 
fabrication of their cloths, generally called worsted coatings, and they proved so popular 
when thrown upon the market, that the introducer soon found a host of rivals and 
imitators." 

On the other hand, similar fabrics were made at about the same time by the Hockanum 
Company, of Rockville, Conn. Mr. George Sykes, the vice-president and superintendent 
of that company, writes that about 1869 or 1870, he was shown samples of a new fabric for 
men's wear, then being made in England, which, upon examination, he found to be made 
of about the same quality of wool they were then using in their woolen goods, but that the 
fibers were combed and laid parallel, thus causing the figure in the weave to show up 
much brighter and clearer than it could be made to do with a carded thread. He learned 
upon inquiry that yarns of this nature had been used in and around Huddlesfield in 
making vestings, and that Mr. Josiah Lodge, of Huddlesfield, claimed to have been the 
first to utilize them in trouserings and coatings. Mr. Lodge was then the designer for 
Taylor & Sons, and is now one of the leading manufacturers of fine worsteds at Huddles- 



> 

r 

z 
O 

H 
O 
2 

o 

C/5 

H 
m 
D 



> 

< 




THE ARLINGTON MILLS, 91 

Recurring again to that feature of the worsted manufacture 

which has done most to develop the industry and to benefit the 

. people, the introduction of the cotton-warp, we may 

■^° "^J^^^^^^^ safely agree with the late Dr. John L. Hayes, for 

twenty-three years "the secretary of the National 

Association of Wool Manufacturers, in his statement, made 

field. Mr. Sykes at once looked about him to find some one in this country who manu- 
factured this style of yams, and came in contact with Fiss, Barnes, & Erben, of Phila- 
delphia (now Erben, Search, & Co.), who were spinning worsted yarns, but had never made 
any for men's wear goods. They were reluctant to undertake it, as new machinery would 
be required. But this they agreed to put in, upon Mr. Sykes' assurance that more of the 
yarn would be called for. His first order was for 300 pounds of yarn, which he put into 
sample pieces of worsted, which the company sold in the fall of 1870. This 300 pounds of 
yarn lasted for some time, but to-day the company is using more than 12,000 pounds of the 
yarn every week. Up to the time mentioned, Mr. Sykes adds, the Hockanum Company 
had never heard of the manufacture of this description of goods in this country, and their 
agents assured them that their product was the first to appear in the American market. 

Mr. Henry G. Kittredge, the editor of the " Boston Journal of Commerce," who has de- 
voted much time to the historical phase of our wool manufactures, recently published an 
article which tends to show that the Hockanum and the Washington Mills placed their 
worsted suitings for men's wear upon the market at about the same time, namely, the fall 
of 1870 or the spring of 1871. Mr. Kittredge writes : " In the treasurer's annual report to 
the Washington Mills' stockholders, Dec. 24, 1868, we learn that in 1864 two combing 
machines with necessary preparing and spinning machinery were purchased for making 
worsted yarns. With this machinery the mills experimented on various fabrics with more 
or less success until 1868, when, in the words of the report, ' an article of very general 
utility was perfected,' for which new worsted machinery was bought, also looms of new and 
improved construction, for the manufacture of goods which had been before wholly im- 
ported, thus diversifying the product of the mills and ' adding one more and a very impor- 
tant branch to American industry.' Though this report has been differently interpreted 
by authorities, it has great significance, in our minds, to the matter before us. It appears, 
upon the statement of the overseer of the finishing department at that time, that regular 
shipments of these goods were made in 1868, which would go to show that immediate 
steps were taken toward their manufacture after Mr. Mudge's return from the Paris Expo- 
sition. Whatever doubt may surround this statement, we have indisputable evidence that 



92 THE ARLINGTON MILLS. 

in 1876, that "No event of the century has done more for 
female comfort, and for the industry of wool, than the 
introduction of the cotton-warp, and its extensive utilization 
by means of improved machinery. Cotton, instead of the rival 
of wool, became at once its most important auxiliary, and has 
added vastly to its consumption ; for this utilization of cotton 
permitted a much cheaper fabric, practically the same as a 
woolen fabric, and one so covered with wool that the presence 
of cotton can only be discovered by the closest inspection." 

It will be interesting to recall and preserve the successive steps 
by which this new industry was established and firmly rooted in 
the United States, We confine our sketch solely to 
The first the development of the dress-goods branch, which 
made prcccdcd by more than twenty years the introduction 
here. q{ ^^le manufacture of worsted suitings. It is believed 
that there are but two men now living who were in- 
timately connected with the earliest enterprises in this direction. 

about the middle of 1869 light-weight worsteds were being manufactured in quantity, made 
from Canadian and Kentucky wools — 2-60 yarn for warp and filling. In course of time 
American fleece was largely used. It was not till the latter part of 1870, or the early part 
of 1871, that heavy weights were begun to be manufactured, at the suggestion of Joseph 
Sawyer, a partner of Mr. Mudge, in the commission business. The first effort in this di- 
rection was in imitation of a diagonal worsted cloth which Mr. Sawyer had had made into 
a frock-coat by a London tailor, in July, 1870. The weave of this diagonal has been 
fortunately discovered of late as the product of the pattern loom. It is an eight-harness 
pattern with a backing. The first heavy goods marketed, however, were with a twill face 
and basket back — a double cloth — made from the fifth sort of Canada wool. P. C. Kirk 
now of the firm of Kirk, Hutchins, & Stoddard, worsted cloth manufacturers, of Auburn, 
Mass., was, during this period, the efficient superintendent of the mills and the executive 
man in carrying out the orders of his official superiors. The success of these ventures was 
largely due to his skill and surveillance." 



THE ARLINGTON MILLS. 93 

These are Mr. W. C. Chapin, of the Riverside Mills in Provi- 
dence, for eighteen years the resident agent of the Pacific Mills 
at Lawrence, and Mr. Samuel R. Payson, of Boston, the president 
of the Manchester Mills. Both of these gentlemen recall vividly 
and entertainingly the struggles, the difficulties, and the triumphs 
of the new departure with which they had so much to do. 

The first delaines made in the United States were manufac- 
tured at a mill in Ballardvale, Mass., of which Mr. J. P. Bradlee 
was afterwards the general agent and chief owner, — a 

,/° '^^ mill which holds an honorable position in the textile 

Mariana. ■■• 

annals of the country as having been the first to manu- 
facture fine flannels. The manufacture of delaines was under- 
taken at this mill by John Marland, who seems to have rented 
power and machinery for that purpose, employing about 
fifty looms. Associated with Mr. Marland in this enterprise 
was Jeremiah S. Young, his brother-in-law, formerly a clergy- 
man at Portland, Maine, and subsequently treasurer of the 
Pacific Mills. All the wool was combed by hand, and the 
experiment extended to delaines for printing, and to others 
for dyeing in the piece. For a time they were printed by the 
block process at North Andover, and afterwards on the ma- 
chines of the Hamilton Manufacturing Company at Lowell. 
Mr. Chapin also printed some of these goods at his printing 
mill at Fall River. Mr. Marland was not a manufacturer of 
large means, and although he had great perseverance, his 
enterprise cannot be said to have been successful. One diffi- 
culty encountered is said to have been the unwillingness of the 
American market to accept these home-made goods, — a diffi- 



94 • THE ARLINGTON MILLS. 

culty which was partially overcome by imitating foreign marks, 

and disguising in every way possible the domestic origin of the 

goods. This obstacle is one which our woolen manufacturers 

encounter more or less to this day. The American 

reju ice pgQpjg havc imposcd more obstacles in the way of 

against r r r j 

American- the succcss of homc manufactures, by their prejudice 

made . _ _ . , , . . 

goods. 1^ favor of foreign goods than it is easy to esti- 
mate, or to speak of with patience. It is a prejudice 
which undoubtedly had justification in the superior texture and 
design of foreign goods at the time when the industry was young 
among us. But it yields too slowly before the steady advances 
which have been effected in all branches of the wool manufacture. 
The second establishment to enter upon this line of manu- 
facturing was the Amoskeag Company at Man- 
"^^^ Chester, New Hampshire. This company owned a 

Amoskeag 

Company. Small mill at Hookset in that State, which it refitted 
for the purpose of making delaines, equipping it 
with two hundred looms. The goods were printed at Green- 
wich, Rhode Island. The manufacture was continued at 
Hookset for about seven years. 

In the meanwhile, several of the Amoskeag stockholders 

organized, in 1845, ^ ^^^w company, the Manchester Mills, 

situated in the town of that name in New Hamp- 

"^^^ shire, and at once built an extensive factory for 

Manchester 

Mills. the manufacture of delaines. At first, this com- 
pany used carded wool only — combing machines 
were introduced about 1855, very shortly after they had super- 
seded the hand comber in England and France. The wool 



THE ARLINGTON MILLS. 95 

was carded on what was called a tantrem card, and spun on 
a mule by a process similar to that of cotton spinning. The 
wools used were a high grade of Ohio and Pennsylvania 
merino. The Manchester Mills printed their own goods from 
the start. All delaines had previously been printed by hand, 
with what was known as the block machine, — a slow and ex- 
pensive process. At Manchester the so-called Birch machine 
was used for a time ; but Mr. Payson, whose connection with 
the Manchester Mills dates back to 1847, informs the writer 
that the use of the cylinder for printing calicoes, at Manchester, 
almost immediately suggested the similar method of printing de- 
laines now universally adopted. It is believed that the first use 
of the printing cylinder for this purpose was at Manchester. 

The original delaines made by this company were goods 

averaging about seven yards to the pound. The fashion which 

made them popular changed about 1868, but printed 

Delaines, goods are Still made at these mills, weighing about 
eleven yards to the pound, and chiefly for summer 
wear. The early popularity of the fabric may be inferred 
from the fact that the Manchester Mills made delaines of the 
value of $1,000,000 per annum. The corporation has been 
continually improving its machinery and enlarging and varying 
its product, and retains a front rank among the largely increased 
number of establishments devoted to this industry. 

The success of these pioneers brought others into 

Hamilton 

Woolen the field. Shortly after the Manchester Mills were 
Company, g^^rtcd, the Hamilton Woolen Company, at South- 
bridge, Massachusetts, converted their mill from a woolen-cloth 



96 THE ARLINGTON MILLS. 

factory into a dress -goods mill; and in 1853 the Pacific 
Mills, at Lawrence, was organized to make the same class of 
fabrics. 

Mr. Chapin was associated with the Pacific Mills from their 
origin, first as the superintendent of the print works, but soon 
after as resident agent, — a post which he retained 
c chr^i u'^^il about 1871. He states that they began making 
their delaines out of woolen yarn; but almost im- 
mediately they imported the first combing machines ever 
brought to this country, and at once began their use. 
There were six of these machines, of the Lister pattern, in 
operation in 1854. 

As time passed, the various forms of the worsted manu- 
facture, as developed on the Continent, began to find exponents 
in this country. The Washington Mills was the first 
"^^^ to embark in the manufacture of certain all-wool 

Washington 

Mills. fabrics, formerly made only in France. This branch 
of the industry has met with greater difficulties in 
this country than any other, for reasons which are well under- 
stood by practical manufacturers, and not least among which 
is the comparatively high labor cost of producing goods, on 
account of the fineness of the yarns used. However, several of 
our manufacturers have reached a remarkable degree of ex- 
cellence in these fabrics, the Arlington Mills being conspicuous 
among them. 

The Arlington Mills was the first to introduce, in the 
United States, the succ-essful manufacture of black alpacas, 
mohairs, and brilliantines. At about the same time, similar 



THE ARLINGTON MILLS. 97 

goods, of most excellent quality, were made by the Farr Alpaca 
Company, at Holyoke, Massachusetts. Up to 1872 

mohair" ^^ ^^'^ ^^ commott belief that these goods could only 
be made at Bradford, England, where their manu- 
facture was first undertaken, and where peculiar advantages 
existed for its successful prosecution. In that year the Arling- 
ton Mills began to turn out goods whose immediate popularity 
in the market proved them to be equal, at least, to the produc- 
tions of the best manufacturers in the old-established seats of 
the worsted manufacture in Europe. The achievement was the 
result of a large expenditure of money, judiciously applied 
from the beginning to the manufacture of goods which could 
hold their own in comparison with imported fabrics of like 
character. At the Philadelphia Exhibition of 1876 the Ar- 
lington Mills made an exhibit of these goods, with 

. ,. * one exception the only exhibit of the kind from 

Arhng^ton ^ ^ 

Mills at an American mill. The goods attracted marked 

Philadelphia . . ,, • , i i i 

Exhibition, attention, and especially excited the wonder and 
admiration of foreign visitors, who saw in them the 
evidence that the United States would rapidly become a com- 
petitor with France and England in the fabrication of higher 
lines of goods than had hitherto been made in this country. 
The judges made an award to the Arlington Mills " for a very 
superior collection of black alpacas, brilliantines, figured mo- 
hairs, and Roubaix poplins ; all first-class goods of their kind, 
very uniform in width, color, and finish, and being of recent 
introduction reflect great credit on the manufacturers." We 
give a copy of the diploma on the following page : — 



98 THE ARLINGTON MILLS. 



INTERNHTIONHL EXHIBITION. 

ARLINGTON MILLS, LAWRENCE, MASS. 

ALPACAS AND BRILLIANTINES. 

No. 370 . . . Group 9. 
UNITED STATES CENTENNIAL COMMISSION. 

In accordance with the Act of Congress. 
Philadelphia, Sept. 27th, 1876. 

JOHN L. CAMPBELL, A. T. GOSHORN, JOS. R. HAWLEY, 

Secretary. Director General. President. 



The Arlington Mills had hardly fairly .started in the man- 
ufacture of these goods, — the luster, or hard-finished fabrics 

known as alpacas, poplins, etc., — before the fashion 
fasWol° which decreed their popularity began to change. 

They were made of the long-haired or " luster " 
wool, commonly known as English wool, and largely raised 
in that country, where the manufacture of these fabrics attained 
a larger degree of success than attended it anywhere else. 
But with the decadence of crinoline there came into use the 
soft and clinging fabrics, at that time made principally from 
merino combing wools, which have since held the field against 
all innovation. 



THE ARLINGTON MILLS. 99 

It is impossible to exaggerate the gain to the people of the 

United States from the successful establishment of the worsted 

manufacture in this country. Up to a comparatively 

Benefits of recent period, almost the entire supply of these 

the new 

industry, goods wom by our mothers, wives, and daughters 

was imported from abroad. They were sold at 
prices which placed them beyond the reach of the poorer 
classes. The tariff legislation which permitted the rapid de- 
velopment of the manufacture has resulted in the investment 
of many millions of dollars in capital, and has given steady 
employment, at high wages, to many thousands of people. 
But quite as important and gratifying has been the effect upon 
the cost of these fabrics to the millions of our countrywomen 

who are now clad in them. Substantially all the 
th-'^' cheaper grades of the cotton-warp dress-goods, and 

also the flannel dress-goods, now worn here are 
made here as well, and sold at prices in competition with 
which foreign manufacturers cannot export them. This 
industry is perhaps the most striking illustration of the 
enterprise and courage with which our manufacturers have 
seized upon every opportunity which the extension of adequate 
protection, by the tariff, has offered them, to enlarge the 
industries of the United States. One aspect of it, which 

has attracted the attention of medical men, is the 
ciotiiT" effect in permitting the substitution of garments 

containing more or less of wool, for the cotton fabrics 
with which, for many years, the people of New England, 
notwithstanding its fickle and austere climate, were largely 



100 THE ARLINGTON MILLS. 

clad. One writer says that " our graveyards are filled with the 
remains of men and women whose duration of life has fallen 
sadly short of that of an ancestry whose clothing was fabricated 
solely from wool, around the domestic hearth-stone." 

There is still ample field for the further development of this 
branch of the worsted industry in the United States. There 
exists no adequate reason why practically the whole 
°°" ""^ consumption of our people in this class of goods 
should not be made at home. Few people realize 
what this statement means ; how much of additional capital, 
how many thousands of additional looms and operatives we 
require, in order to enable us to supply the entire home mar- 
ket. Until very recently, more of these goods were imported 
than we made at home. The importations for 1889 
mporso reached the enormous aggregate of 93,000,000 

dress-goods. && ea ^^^ ' 

square yards, with a foreign value of nearly $20,- 
000,000. This is equivalent to two and one-half square 
yards for every woman and girl in the country, and means 
that one in three of our female population wears a foreign- 
made dress. By the census of 1880, the total quantity of 
dress-goods made in this country was about 90,000,000 yards 
— not so many as we imported in 1889. The quantity of the 

home-made goods has largely increased in the ten 

The home • 1111 

J ,. years smce passed, — how much we have no means 

production. •' ^ ' 

of knowing, — but still the proportion of these 
goods imported, as compared with the home manufacture, con- 
tinues to be vastly in excess of the proportion in any other 
branch of the wool manufacture. Nevertheless, our experience 



THE ARLINGTON MILLS. 101 

proves that we know how to make these goods, and can make 
them as well as the Bradford people. Neither in the matter of 
climate, nor in the relative skill of their operatives, do our for- 
eign competitors possess any advantage which American in- 
genuity and enterprise cannot overcome. Nor are we ready to 
admit that even the French, whose present supremacy in this 
field we frankly concede, can surpass Americans in the inge- 
nuity and artistic genius requisite to create new fabrics to meet 
the constantly changing demands of fashion. 





VI. 

THE PRODUCTS OF THE ARLINGTON WORSTED MILLS. 

|HE variety of the fabrics devised since the worsted 
manufacture reached its high state of development 
is so large as almost to defy cataloguing. Appar- 
ently there is no limit to the new variations of which 
it is susceptible. A single firm in Bradford has sent to America 
a list of worsted fabrics embracing over sixty dis- 
variety of ^jjj^t gradcs of goods. The list includes all the goods 

worsted 

fabrics. commonly known in the trade as delaines, cashmeres, 
brocades, Italian cloths, mousselines, bareges, gren- 
adines, merinos, serges, bombazines, Henrietta cloths, etc. 

These names rarely possess any etymological significance, 
being usually given arbitrarily by the first introducer of the 
article, and frequently applied, with variations, to fabrics quite 
different from the originals, and especially to cheaper imita- 
tions. 

The goods made by particular establishments are, however, 
well known to the trade by the designations which they apply. 



THE ARLINGTON MILLS. 103 

The products of the worsted department of the Arlington Mills 
now consist chiefly of ladies' dress-goods and worsted yarns. 
The dress-goods have from the outset enjoyed a 
Products high reputation. The aim has always been a double 
Arlington. One : first, to provide good fabrics for the masses at 
reasonable prices ; and, second, to meet the wants of 
those who from habit or from prejudice have hitherto con- 
sidered it impossible to purchase fabrics of American manu- 
facture fit to wear, and so have depended wholly upon goods 
made abroad. 

The Arlington cotton-warp, fancy high-colored plaids are re- 
garded as among the best goods of the kind made in the United 
States, and have been sold in very large quantities. 
p°i^ds "^^^ mills have also made a specialty of the man- 
ufacture of standard piece-dyed cashmeres. Their 
quahties "90," " lOO," "200," and "300" in these goods are 
well known in the most distant parts of the country. The 
trade has always appreciated the excellence of the alpacas, 
coat-linings, and Canton cloths made at these mills. Very fine 
and light specimens of the latter fabric, especially 
Coat-iinings adapted to the wants of the rubber trade in the 
^° loth" °° manufacture of gossamer waterproofs for ladies' 
wear, have been exceedingly popular. One feature 
of the management is its readiness, at any time, to make spe- 
cialties on orders for peculiar fabrics. 

While striving to produce desirable medium-priced goods for 
general use, the Arlington began some years ago the manu- 
facture of a fine quality of all-wool goods. Experiments in 



104 THE ARLINGTON MILLS. 

this field, where the competition is with the most skilful and ex- 
perienced of French manufacturers, who have commanded the 
American market from the beginning, have been 
"^°° costly, and at times of uncertain outcome. But 

goods. -' ' 

perseverance has borne its legitimate fruit, here as 
elsewhere ; and the fine and beautifully woven all-wool worsted 
goods which the Arlington has succeeded in placing on the 
market are believed to be the best goods of this description 
ever fabricated in this country, and they will compare most 
favorably with the products of the Rheims looms. These 
goods already command a large sale, and are rapidly winning 
their way to public favor. The annual product of dress-goods 
of every description now aggregates about 15,000,000 yards. 
The Arlington Mills has achieved its success by its persistent 
adhesion to the production of standard grades of 
attlms goods, which have received the popular approval, 
and become well known to the trade and the public. 
But the management is always on the alert to detect new 
methods of appealing to the taste and promoting the com- 
fort of all classes of the people in the whole field of fabrics 
known as worsted dress-goods. 

But the weaving department of the Arlington Mills, even with 
the new machinery now added, has never equalled its spinning 
capacity; and for the last five or six years it has 
Worsted devoted a great deal of attention to the spinning of 
for sale, worsted yams for sale. With the recent construc- 
tion of still another spinning mill, and the intro- 
duction of the latest patterns of machinery for spinning by the 



THE ARLINGTON MILLS. 105 

French system, its facilities for supplying worsted yarns of all 
the desired qualities have reached a point that renders it in- 
ferior to no establishment in the United States, 

These yarns are now made in all the forms and qualities 
which are demanded by all the branches of the worsted manu- 
facture. Yarns for cassimeres, coatings, and cloak- 

V r- f s ^^Ss> supplied by the Arlington Mills, are now in 
regular use, with the most satisfactory results, by 
many of the most celebrated makers of goods for men's 
wear. 

The knitters of hosiery and of Jersey cloths require certain 

Hosiery grades of yarn which the mills have been eminently 

^^''^^' successful in supplying. 

Braid, Saxony, and zephyr yarns are also specialties of the 
Arlington. In all these varieties experience proves 

Zephyr 

yarns. tlicir products to be equal in every respect to the 
best makes of imported yarns. 

These yarns are made of wool ranging in fineness from fine 
Australian to coarse quarter-blood, and are furnished in the 
grease or in fast colors, either slubbing or skein-dyed, single or 
two-ply. They are shipped either in skeins, on spinning or 
twister bobbins, on small spools or on large dresser spools, 
according as customers may require. 

The Arlington Mills yarns have met with such noteworthy 
success for reasons which reach to the special methods em- 
ployed at every stage of their manufacture. 

One of the most important features of successful manufacture 
of yarn of uniform grade is the buying and sorting of the wool. 



106 THE ARLINGTON MILLS. 

Not only is it necessary to use great care in the purchase of 

wool to secure as close a uniformity as possible, but the sorting 

itself must be carefully done. We have already 

Care in described the sorting-room, in which a body of 

selecting 

stock. the most skilful and experienced wool sorters is 
employed, with a large stock of the raw material 
always at command. The system here pursued enables the 
Arlington to produce a given grade of stock year in and year 
out, without practical differences in the grading of a given 
quality. This requires the carrying of a very large quantity of 
both unsorted and sorted wool at all times, so that the slightest 
variations of one purchase with another can be equalized, and 
practical uniformity obtained. 

The utmost care must also be used in the washing of the 
wool, not only to save loss of material, but to produce uniform 
color, as well as softness and loftiness of staple. The 
Washing, experience of the Arlington in this department ac- 
cords with that of the best spinners in England, who 
agree that a potash olive-oil soap is necessary to give the 
best results. 

The handling of fine Australian wool requires very superior 
carding and combing to produce the best results. The Arling- 
ton has been constantly improving its machinery, 
"nd"^ not only to produce the largest quantity per day, 
combing, per comb, but also to secure the most perfect work 

attainable. 
Special machinery has also been introduced for the produc- 
tion of colored yarns, slubbing dyed, which gives much the 



THE ARLINGTON MILLS. 107 

most uniform and perfect shades, both for close matching 
in color and in fastness to light and soap. In consequence, 
the Arlington can now produce a fine colored 
worsted yarn, either two-ply or single, much su- 
perior in quality and coloring to a skein-dyed 
article, for almost any purpose. For knitting purposes, 
single worsted yarn requires to be perfectly made, and as free 
as possible from slubs and bunches. Special attachments on 
nearly all of the machinery, from the comb to the spinning- 
frame, have been provided in the Arlington Mills to avoid 
these common defects. The drawing machinery is of the 
latest patterns, with many improvements introduced 
uperior , thcmsclves. It is important, in producing a fine 

machinery. •' r t sr t3 

grade of yarn, that the draft shall not exceed what 
the staple is able to stand, and make a uniform article, 
as they have for their fine work nine different operations in 
the drawing, which, with the several doublings succeeding, 
make from comb to yarn on their " XXX " grade, over three 
million doublings ; and if reckoned back as far as the cards, 
counting only four doublings on the comb, the number of 
doubhngs is over seven million two hundred and fifty thousand. 

In both the drawing and spinning departments particular 

care is taken as to the class of help employed, as so much 

there depends upon the care and attention of the 

s UcTn"s individual operative. In the drawing, the opera- 
tives are drilled to make nice, careful splicings, all 
the way from the gill-box to the spinning-frame. A very 
slight neglect in this matter of piecing on the gill-box may 



108 THE ARLINGTON MILLS. 

show its defect for a long distance in the yarn produced. 
The spinning-frames are also adapted to produce the finest 
counts of worsted yarn known to the trade, and here also the 
greatest care in the selection of help is necessary. On yarn 
made for sale, the doffers are not permitted, either in the spin- 
ning or twisting, to piece up an end. 

Special provision for learners is made on work which can be fol- 
lowed through the mill in the several processes of manufacture, 
so that its defects may be noted and the proper remedies applied. 
The twisting department is specially fitted up with a view 
to making yarn for sale, and the frames are constantly kept in 

perfect repair. A slight defect in the twister frame 
Twisting. ',^\\\ producc scrious results on the twisted yarn, and 

often for a long distance before it is discovered. 
Special attention has been given to the tying of knots, experi- 
ence having proved that the weaver's knot is the only thing 
that can be depended upon for closeness and evenness. 

After the yarn is spun, twisted, and reeled, it has still to be 
examined. This is a feature to which the Arlington Mills 

owes its reputation as much, perhaps, as to any 
Examination, other. Nonc of the twisted yarn, unless a customer 

specially asks that the examination be dispensed 
with, is sent from the mill without having every skein thor- 
oughly examined, whether it is wound on bobbins or not. In 
this way defects which ought not to exist are detected and 
remedied, and many imperfections, such as are otherwise un- 
avoidable, and would have to be left to customers to report, 
are thus removed. 




VII. 

THE FACTORY SYSTEM IN THE UNITED STATES. 

|HIS volume would be incomplete without some al- 
lusion to the help employed by the Arlington Mills, 
and the general subject of the influence of the fac- 
tory system upon the people who are a part of it. 
It is not unusual to read that the development of her textile 
manufactures has had an unfavorable influence upon the char- 
acter of New England population, morally, physi- 
Eariy cally, and intellectually. This impression has been 

New England i , t i . , ,- 

factory ufe. Strengthened by some accounts, recently prmted, of 
the early New England factory life, in comparison 
with which there is claimed to be a distinct retrogression to-day. 
An interesting paper on " Early Factory Labor in New Eng- 
land from 1830 to 1848 " appeared in the Annual 
Harriet H ^^^P^^^ ^^ ^he Massachusetts Bureau of Labor 
. Robinson. Statistics for 1883. It is from the pen of Mrs. 
Harriet H. Robinson, who was herself an operative 
in one of the Lowell mills during this period. It is an 



110 THE ARLINGTON MILLS. 

entertaining picture of a life, certain phases of which, it must 
be admitted, have almost wholly disappeared, — an idyllic sort 
of life, incident to the novelty of manufacturing under the 
factory system when new to this country, and quite unlike 
factory life as it exists to-day, anywhere in the world, outside 
of books. 

Lowell was then but little more than a factory village. The 

cotton mills were new, or still constructing, and help was scarce 

and in great demand. Stories were told all over the country 

of the new factory place that was building, and of the fabulous 

wages that could there be earned. These stories 

,^ ^ reached the ears of the sons and daughters of the 

Yankee <=• 

El Dorado, farmcrs and mechanics throughout New England, 
and they poured into the Yankee El Dorado, fur- 
nishing the basis of the original population of the town. They 
were from a class of people who do not now, as a rule, enter 
factory life. Many of them were educated ; others worked at 
the loom in order to earn money wherewith to buy education, 
and still others left teaching for weaving, because they could 
command greater wages. Mrs. Robinson gives a quaint resume 
of the antecedents of the people whom she found around her, 
"some of whom were the granddaughters of patriots who had 
fought at Bunker Hill, and had lost the family means in the 
war for independence." It was natural that such operatives 
should form literary circles, should edit newspapers like the 
" Lowell Offering," should hold their heads high, and should 
surround themselves with an atmosphere which is not often en- 
countered in the Lawrence or Lowell of to-day. "The majority 



> 

50 

r 
z 
O 

O 
z 

O 
O 
H 

O 
Z 





THE ARLINGTON MILLS. Ill 

of them," says Mrs. Robinson, " were better born and better 
educated than their 'overlookers';" and as a consequence they 
were, she insists, better treated than they are to-day. Help was 
too valuable to be ill-treated, and this statement Mrs. Robinson 
rnakes with the emphasis of italics, implying that such is no 
longer the case in the New England factory towns. 

Help is plentier now than it was then. Seldom a vacancy 

occurs without a crowd of applicants for it. The sons and 

daughters of the farmers no longer tend looms in 

, ^°5^ r summer and teach school in winter. The work in 

character of 

operatives, the mills is mostly done by a resident population, 
living in its own homes rather than in boarding- 
houses, as in early Lowell days. There is no glamor of ro- 
mance about the work, nor are there many poets in the mills. 
But the change is not all for the worse, nor is it true, as Mrs. 
Robinson implies, that the lives of the modern operatives are 
"barren and hopeless," and their children on the road "to 
moral and physical destruction." 

It is true that the modern manufacturing establishment is not 

conducted as a philanthropic institution. It is true that it is 

not a part of the regular duties of the management 

... ° . to exercise a protecting care and a parental influence 

philanthropic jr o 1 

institutions, ovcr the operatives, as Mrs. Robinson thinks should 
be the case. Those duties and responsibilities the 
manufacturers generally leave to public and private philan- 
thropy, precisely as do the men engaged in all other occupa- 
tions which require the employment of large bodies of operatives. 
The change which Mrs. Robinson observes between factory life 



112 THE ARLINGTON MILLS. 

now and forty years ago is due to causes of which she takes 
no cognizance, and is in no sense a retrograde change, or the 
. subject of a legitimate criticism upon the manufacturer. The 
people now employed as operatives have come up and taken 
the places of those who formerly worked in the mills, and who 
now find occupations more agreeable and remunerative. 

Our sterile New England now supports, by reason of its nu- 
merous factories, immense populations which were not here and 
could not have secured a livelihood here, at any 
ncrease -^vages, before the establishment of these factories. 

comforts of o ' 

life. Not only has the number of occupations increased 
in consequence of these establishments, but the 
average incomes of the people have grown in an equal degree. 
There is as much comfort and plenty in the homes of the mill 
operatives in Massachusetts to-day as there used to be in the 
days before Lowell and Lawrence were founded, in the 
homes of the farmers throughout New England out of which 
came these intellectual spinners and weavers to whom Mrs. 
Robinson alludes. Compare them, home for home, comfort for 
comfort, life for life, and the balance will never fail to be with 
the mill operative of to-day, provided only that he or she be 
thrifty. They can afford to eat better food, to wear better 
clothes, and they will do more reading and have more carpets 
on the floors than did the average family in a like grade of life 
prior to the establishment of the factory system. Moreover, 
they have snug deposits in the savings banks, a modern luxury 
which their predecessors knew little about, for they lived from 
hand to mouth. This difference is due partly to increased 



THE ARLINGTON MILLS. 113 

wages and partly to the increased purchasing capacity of the 

same amount of money. Mr. Edward Atkinson, the economist, 

has calculated that here in New England wages are 

twenty-five per cent, more than they were thirty 

wages. J r j j 

and forty years ago, while the purchasing power 
of money is twenty-five per cent, greater than then. All 
this difference, equivalent to one-third of his earnings, and due 
to the successful establishment of the factory system among us, 
the operative of to-day either applies to his living expenses, 
thus raising the standard of comfort for all his family, or de- 
posits in the savings bank. 

Nor is it easy to exaggerate the improvement in surround- 
ings and the gain in opportunity of every description which 
time has brought to the mill operative. Schools are 

mprove yastly better, libraries are more frequent and more 

surroundings. •' ' '■ 

accessible ; every means of advancement is close at 
hand. What was once the exclusive privilege of the few has 
become more and more accessible to all. 

The greatest gain to the operative has come from the reduc- 
tion in the hours of labor. They worked thirteen hours a day 

in the original New England mills, or seventy-eight 

Reduced hours i i -nt , i 1,1 1 

of labor hours a week. Now they work ten hours a day, or 
sixty hours a week. That eighteen hours a week, 
equivalent to ninety-three days a year of ten hours each, is 
added to the leisure of the operative, without deduction 
from his wage, to be utilized according to the inclination of 
each, but certainly not all of it to be wasted in frivolity and 
amusement. Mrs. Robinson tells us that the ori2:inal Lowell 



114 THE ARLINGTON MILLS. 

operatives were not overworked, though their hours were long. 
" I have known a girl to sit twenty or thirty minutes at a time. 
They were not driven. They took their work-a-day Hfe easy." 
This is quite an Acadian picture ; but it does not accord with 
the general recollection of the manner in which things went in 
the first factories. Automatic machinery is so constructed and 
speeded as to require a fixed amount of labor or attention from 
those who operate it. As this machinery has been improved 
and simplified, more supervision can be intrusted to a single 
operative. Two or three looms can now be at- 
, ^^°f tended, where once an operative could tend but one. 

not exacting. J^ 

But it is not true that the work required of that 
single operative has increased in anything like the proportion 
of the increase in his product from the several machines ; 
nor is it true that it is hard and exacting work, or that 
the operatives leave the factories at evening physically and 
mentally exhausted. Machinery permits the earning of wages 
with less of physical labor, and with less of- skill, than was the 
case in the days when everything was done by handicraft. The 
field of labor has been constantly enlarging, while its recom- 
pense has increased and its toil is reduced by the development 
of mechanism as we see it in our factories to-day. 

Another mighty gain to the operative is in the conditions 
under which he does his work. Sanitary and 

amaryan jjycrjgj^j^ couditious werc ovcrlooked in the pioneer 

hygienic con- •' <=• J^ 

ditions. factories. Bad air, bad ventilation, insufficient heat, 

filthy surroundings, were inseparable from factory 

labor fifty years ago. We have described some of the improve- 



THE ARLINGTON MILLS. 115 

merits in these respects which are found in the Arlington Mills, 
and which are not peculiar to that mill. We have said that manu- 
facturers realize that the best results accrue to them when they 
surround their operatives by the most favorable conditions for 
the promotion of health and activity. We have disclaimed the 
philanthropic motive in their behalf, in these advances and im- 
provements ; but it would not be fair to permit the inference to 
be drawn that they are either ignorant of or indifferent to the 
fact that there is a joint advantage in whatever conduces to the 
comfort, the contentment, and the health of their operatives. 

There is, indeed, in every well-managed manufacturing estab- 
lishment a certain esprit, a feeling of cooperation, between 
operatives and management, which is conducive to the most 
effective results. It must have its origin, on the part of the 
former, in the feeling that employers are doing the 
'"m°ir^r'^ best that is possible for them, under existing condi- 
tions. This feeling ought to be strong enough to 
inspire a certain sense of loyalty, a desire to spin a smooth 
yarn, to weave a perfect cloth, to secure the best results 
from machinery, an emulation which permits the humblest 
employe to share in the pride which the success of the mill 
inspires in directors and stockholders. That this feeling is often 
missing cannot be denied ; that strikes are of not infrequent 
occurrence in the textile industries is a fact of public notoriety ; 
that friction is common in many mills where none of the ma- 
chinery generates it, is true ; and wherever these conditions 
exist, the loss that follows is shared by the operatives and by 
the owners alike. That being the case, it is quite as much for 



116 THE ARLINGTON MILLS. 

the interest of one as of the other, that this spirit of coopera- 
tion and of loyalty should not be lacking. As a matter of good 
business, apart from the philanthropic phase of the question, 
the modern manufacturer considers these things, and does the 
best for his employes that close competition and uncertain 
markets will permit. It is an unquestioned fact that labor in 
American mills is not only better remunerated than in the mills 
of any other country, but is made up of better citizens, who lead 
happier lives in more comfortable homes, and that its children 
more frequently rise to higher stations in life. In all these 
respects, also, factory labor compares most favorably with any 
other occupation by which wages are earned in this country, and 
the factory town is the equal of other aggregations of people, in 
the public spirit, intelligence, and morals of its residents. 

That factory life is not demoralizing to those engaged in it, 

that it does not blunt them mentally, morally, or physically, is 

the conclusion at which Col. Carroll D. Wright 

Factory arrived in 1880, after a careful investigation which 

life not ° 

demoralizing, covcrcd the whole New England field. He took up 
each count in the indictment against the system, and 
found each in turn unfounded. It necessitates the employ- 
ment of women and children, but its tendency is not, as shown 
by experience, to destroy family ties, domestic habits, or the 
home. The extension to women of an occupation whereby 
they can contribute directly to the support of the family may 
be claimed to have helped to build up the home, rather 
than -destroy it, because it adds to its comforts and removes 
the grinding poverty which makes of home a hell. Under 



THE ARLINGTON MILLS. 117 

the careful regulations which modern laws have thrown around 

the employment of children, the evils which sprang from it 

in the early days of the factory system, particularly 

Carroll D. jj^ England, have disappeared. Young children are 

investigation, now almost Universally excluded from the factory, 

and where the age permits, the fact warrants Col. 

Wright's conclusion that they are much better off inside than 

outside the factory. 

Neither is employment in textile factories injurious to the 
health. This fact is demonstrated by the most elaborate statis- 
tics, by which the death-rate in factory towns is shown 
Health. \jq bg not exceptional, under the constantly improv- 
ing surroundings to which allusion has been made. 
It has sometimes been said that the factory system leads 
to intemperance, unthrift, poverty, and immorality ; but this 
assertion has ceased to be frequent; for familiarity with the 
social conditions prevailing in a town like Lawrence shows just 
the reverse to be the case. 

On the other hand, the economic advantages which spring 

from the establishment of the factory system of manufacture, 

and which increase with its spread in the United 

conomic g^^^-gg ^j.g ^g far-rcaching as civilization itself. 

advantages. ' •=" 

They may be summed up in the increase of wages 
and production, and the decrease in the prices of goods pro- 
duced — which comprise the summum bonum of social econ- 
omy — not only to those directly employed, but to all classes of 
society and to all communities. Half a century ago Dr. Andrew 
Ure, in his treatise on the " Philosophy of Manufactures," sum- 



118 THE ARLINGTON MILLS. 

marized the gain which has come to the world from the 
utiHzation of machinery in the factory system under these three 
heads : — 

1st. It makes it possible to fabricate some articles which, 
otherwise, could not be fabricated at all. 

2d. It enables an operative to turn out a greater quantity 
of work than he could before, — time, labor, and quality of 
work remaining constant. 

3d. It effects a substitution of labor comparatively un- 
skilled, for that which is more skilled. 

Many writers have since discussed the question, but 
none of them have substantially improved this summary of 
the benefits of the factory system, save in one particular; 
namely, the increase in earnings which it permits to the 
individual operative, accompanied by a marked reduction in 
the physical exertion required of him to earn a livelihood. 
The hand-loom weaver in the United States never 

Past and earned more than fifty cents a day, and in earning 

wages'. that he was compelled to exert himself physically 
to a degree not approximated in the management of 
a power loom. The fact that labor comparatively unskilled can 
now do the work which formerly required an unusual dexterity 
possessed by but few, has vastly enlarged the opportunities for 
gainful occupation, correspondingly reducing poverty and pau- 
perism. Mechanical skill still finds its ample employment — its 
field has also been enlarged and its earnings increased under the 
impetus of the better wage of the less dextrous classes. 

The practical demonstration of these things may be studied 



THE ARLINGTON MILLS. 119 

by any one who will take the trouble to pursue his inquiries 
among the good people of the thrift}'', prosperous, growing, 
orderly, well-governed, and progressive city of Lawrence. Its 
population by the Eleventh Census is 44,654; and of this 
population at least 7,000 souls may be said to depend directly 
for their livelihood upon the Arlington Mills. The 
Employes of actual number employed by the corporation is now 

the Arlington 

Mills. about 2,700, of whom 2,250 are in the worsted mills, 
and 450 in the cotton mills. The operatives are 
believed to be as well drilled in their various duties as any in the 
country, and they share in the pride which the corporation feels 
in these well-appointed mills, and which springs from the quality 
of the goods turned out with their assistance. It is no small part 
of the work of the business office to keep the record of this little 
army of operatives and arrange for their weekly payment. This 
branch of the work is under the charge of paymaster Charles 
Wainwright in the worsted mills, and of Thomas Eastham in 
the cotton mills. 

Up to 1877 the Arlington Mills had been in the habit of pay- 
ing its employes monthly, as was the custom with other manu- 
facturing corporations throughout the State, Early in that year 
Mr. Wainwright called the Treasurer's attention to 
Weekly pay. ^hc advantages which he thought would result from 

ments intro- 
duced, the more frequent payment of wages. He urged that 

the employe who is paid only once a month is obliged 

to use his credit in obtaining his necessary supplies, thereby 

being compelled to pay more for them, and being tempted to 

get into debt. Accordingly, on July i, 1877, the plan was 



120 THE ARLINGTON MILLS. 

adopted of paying every two weeks. This plan worked so well 
that on December i of the same year the system of weekly 
payments was adopted, and has since been in use, payments 
being made every Friday for the work done during the preced- 
ing week. The Arlington was the first corporation of any mag- 
nitude in the State to adopt this plan, which in 1885-6 was 
made compulsory by act of the Legislature. 

While not in any way connected with the Arlington Mills as 

a corporation, it is not out of place to allude to the Arlington 

Cooperative Association, which was organized under 

The Arlington j-j^e j^ws of Massachusctts in the year 1884 by a 

Cooperative 

Association, portion of the operatives in the Arlington Mills. 
For the first two or three years its membership was 
confined to the Arlington operatives, and it was officered mainly 
from the overseers and gentlemen connected with the counting- 
room of the mills, duly elected annually by ballot, but whose 
personal service was one of disinterested benefit. It soon be- 
came evident that the field of usefulnessfor such an association 
was too great to be thus confined, and the membership was 
thrown open to the general public under certain proper restric- 
tions. While then the Association has ceased to be so directly 
of interest to the mill, there still remains such a large proportion 
of its operatives connected with it that its welfare continues to 
be of interest to the management. 

The Association was organized to carry out the principles of 
cooperative distribution upon the plans originally adopted by 
the " Rochdale Pioneers " of England, From the very first the 
business has been conducted on the basis of absolute cash 



THE ARLINGTON MILLS. 121 

transactions for sales, and practically cash purchases, thus lim- 
iting the uncertain elements of business to the smallest possible 
margin. 

The capital of the Association is represented in shares of the 
par value of $5 each, but limited in ownership to 200 shares to 
one individual. This capital is permitted to earn a fixed rate 
of interest only, namely, five per cent., which rate may upon 
vote of the stockholders be reduced, but cannot be increased. 
Whatever profit there may be made in the business over and 
above the expense of running the Association, including this 
fixed rate of interest, after setting aside not less than ten per cent, 
(according to the law of the State) as a sinking-fund, is dis- 
tributed quarterly among the purchasers from the Association 
on the basis of a percentage on the amount of purchases made. 
All persons who are purchasers are eligible for this dividend ; 
but those who are not stockholders receive only one-half the 
rate of dividend which may be declared to stockholding pur- 
chasers. This stock is not transferable, except by permission 
of the Board of Directors. Indeed, such transfers are rendered 
unnecessary in practice by the provision of the constitution, 
which permits the surrender to the Association of any stock at 
its par value after notice, and the reissue of the same to proper 
applicants. The legal limit of this notice is thirty days, but such 
surrenders have always been accepted practically upon demand ; 
and so long as this condition can be maintained, it is impossible 
for the value of the stock to be either more or less than par. 

At the present time the Association has three stores, one, the 
main or central store, on Broadway, near the Arlington Mills, 



122 THE ARLINGTON MILLS. 

and two branch stores, doing a general grocery business. It 
has also a dry-goods department in its Broadway store, and a 
large coal and wood yard near the track of the Boston & Maine 
Railroad. 

The real estate of the Association is valued at about $18,000, 
and its share capital, $40,000. In addition to its regular busi- 
ness conducted by itself, it secures a trade with two boot and 
shoe firms and one clothing store in the interest of its mem- 
bers, by which a dividend of ten per cent, on all purchases is 
paid direct to the Association on such receipted bills as may be 
presented through it, the purchaser himself receiving the same 
rate of dividend at the end of the quarter on such purchase as 
though it were obtained directly from the Association itself. 
This is a feature which has also been long tried in England, and 
with marked success. 

To give an idea of the small beginning and present increase 
in the business of this Association we annex a tabulated 
statement which explains its growth. - It is a magnificent 
commentary upon the capacity for usefulness to the con- 
suming public, and particularly to mill operatives, of associa- 
tions for cooperative distribution. We believe it can be said 
that no other association in the United States has equalled this 
one in. its rapidity of growth, its conservative and skilful man- 
agement, and the confidence which it has received and merited 
from the public. 

The present board of directors contains but few immediately 
connected with the Arlington Mills, but it is with some pleasure 
that we can trace the influence of Arlington men in its councils. 



THE ARLINGTON MILLS. 



123 



THE ARLINGTON COOPERATIVE ASSOCIATION. 





No. stock- 
holders. 


C5pital stock 

at end of each 

year.i 


Interest paid on 
capital stock. 


First year, 1SS5 

Second year, 1SS6 

Third year, 1SS7 

Fourth year, iSSS ........ 

Fifth year, 1SS9 

Sixth year, iSgo 


2S0 
351 
577 
751 
i,oS6 
1.3S1 


$3,557 36 
6,026 67 

14.743 76 
20,203 35 

27.5S5 91 
40,312 32 


$173 24 

192 07 

441 96 

8773s 

1.144 43 

1. 557 53 




$4,386 5S 



1 Including instalments. 





Total sales. 


Dividends paid on 
purchases. 


Sinking-fund at 

end of each 

year. 


First year, 1SS5 


$38,194 94 
45.384 94 
70,970 27 
105,644 81 
141,007 36 
184,753 23 


$1,949 98 
3.118 40 
5.14s 38 
6,6So 71 
9.23s 82 

12,132 07 


$476 58 
1,200 00 
2,150 00 
3,o6i so 
4,408 64 
6,517 79 


Second year, 1SS6 • . 

Third year, 1SS7 

Fourth year, iSSS 

Fifth year, 18S9 

Sixth year, 1S90 




$S85.-9S5 SS 


$38,262 36 





We have now brought our trip through the Arlington Mills 

to an end. It has been a very hurried one, and there are 

many by-paths to which we have not penetrated, 

Conclusion, ^nd many interesting processes to which we have 

not even alluded. The reader who has followed 

us on the journey will not be able to spin worsted or cotton 



124 THE ARLINGTON MILLS. 

yarn, as a reward for his patience, nor would we advise him to 
undertake the weaving of dress-goods on the strength of any 
knowledge this book may have imparted. We have had a 
different purpose in preparing it. Primarily, we have sought 
to preserve, in a permanent form, the history of a textile manu- 
factory which may fairly claim to have conquered results en- 
titling it to rank with other establishments whose records form 
part of the permanent memorials of the country to whose 
development they have contributed. 

Beyond and above this purpose, however, has been the 
aim to make this narrative a contribution to the popular 
knowledge of one of the great and growing industries of our 
country; to a more general understanding of the magnitude 
and importance of this industry, as compared with others that 
engage our people ; and to a wider appreciation of the diffi- 
culties overcome in its conduct, of the ability required to win 
success, and of the preeminent services which those who engage 
in it render to the public. 

The Arlington Mills is typical of a large number of estab- 
lishments throughout New England and the Middle States 
whose history closely resembles its own — which have attained 
prosperity only after vicissitudes often more trying than those 
we have narrated, whose projectors and proprietors have made 
many sacrifices and endured long probations. Similar estab- 
lishments are gradually appearing in the West and the South ; 
and wherever a new textile mill is founded, there, it is safe to 
say, the people will be the gainers in every way. Wherever 
and whenever a community can contribute to the increase of 



THE ARLINGTON MILLS. 125 

these establishments, to their prosperity and their development, 
the seeds are sown for a harvest in which all the public shares. 
No department of mechanical industry presents a more 
fascinating field of study than the textile manufactures. No- 
where has human ingenuity found such splendid play as in the 
perfecting of the machinery 



"which draws and spins a thread 
Without the tedious toil of needless hands." 



Nowhere do there remain wider fields and more tempting 
opportunities for still further advance. No other industry 
comes quite so closely home to. the people as that which has to 
do with the fabrication of the clothing they wear, — it is still 
the " household " industry in a wider sense than that in which 
the term was once applied. No other industry affords to so 
many who earn day's wages pleasanter or easier work at better 
remuneration, or under more congenial conditions. No other 
industry offers to the student of social and economic law a 
more fruitful or suggestive field of study. No other industry 
is better worth the while of the nation to maintain, to develop, 
and to diversify. 

If the perusal of this little book shall help to bring these 
truths home and make them plain, the author will be well^ 
repaid. 



INDEX 



INDEX 



Page 

A 

Alcaii, M 88 

Allen, Stephen N 29 

All-wool dress-goods ....96, 103, 104 

Alpacas 97 

American system, The 16 

Amoskeag Company 94 

Antiquity of spinning and weav- 
ing 68 

Appleton, Nathan 16, 26 

Arkwright, Richard 9 

Arlington Cooperative Associa- 
tion 120 

Arlington fire brigade 31 

Atkinson, Edward 113 

Atlantic Cotton Mills 28 

Atmospheric conditions 80 

Automatic machinery 114 

B 

Bacon Paper Co 28 

Bailey, Robert M 29 



Page 

Bailey, R. M., & Co 38 

Ballardvale Mills 93 

Batchelder, Samuel 26 

Beebe, J. M., &Co 38 

Bigelow, E. B 18 

Boiler-house 42 

Boiler-room, cotton mills 70 

Boott, Kirk 26 

Bosson, George 30 

Boston office. The 38 

Bradford, England 53, 96 

Bradlee, J. P 93 

Brown, Wood, & Kingman 39 

Burning of Arlington Mills 30 

Burr, Charles C 37 

Butler & Robinson 28 

c 

Canton cloths , 103 

Capital, large i6 

Capital stock 34, 37 

Carden, John 53 



130 



INDEX. 



Page 

Carding and combing io6 

Carding mills, Early 15 

Carding-room, The 50 

Card-room, cotton mills 70 

Cards, American-made 51 

Care in selecting stock 106 

Cartwright, Edmund 28, 29 

Census of 1880 100 

Chapin, W. C 92, 94 

Cheaper clothing 99 

Chickering, Jacob 28 

Children in factories 117 

Cleansing wool 48 

Cloth family, The 83 

Coat linings 103 

Colored plaids 103 

Colored yarns 107 

Combing machines 94 

Combing- room, The 52 

Cotton centenary 14 

Cotton crop of United States 80 

Cotton hose 78 

Cotton mill and its products .... 65 

Cotton Mill No. I 66 

Cotton Mill No. 2 66 

Cotton spindles 67 

Cotton, varieties used 76 

Cotton yarns 65 

Cotton warp, invention of 92 

Crompton, Samuel 9 

D 

Delaines 93 

Designing-room 21 



Page 

Doublings in yarn 76, 107 

Drawing 56 

Drawing machinery 107 

Dress-goods 99, 100, 103 

Drying machines 49 

Dye-house 60 

Dyeing 20 

E 

Early New England factory life. . 109 

East wing, the 50 

Eastham, Thomas 119 

Economic advantages of factory 

system T17 

Edmands, J. Wiley 26 

Electric lighting 32 

Electric 3'arns 75 

Employers and employes 115 

Engine-house 43 

Engine-room, cotton mills 70 

Engines, Description of 43 

English " factory system, Origin 

of 12 

English textile manufactures .... 12 

Erben, Search, & Co 91 

Esprit in mills 115 

Essex Manufacturing Company, 26 

Everett Mills 28 

Examination of yarns 108 

Exports of cotton 80 

F 

Factories and Workshop Acts, 

English 13 



INDEX. 



131 



Page 

Factory life not demoralizing ... ii6 

Factory system, Advantages of . . 1 18 
Factory system in the United 

States 109, 117 

Fall River 17 

Farwell Bleachery 28 

Fashion, Changes of 21, 98 

Finishing department 63 

Fire-alarm system 31 

Fire, Precautions against 31 

Fiss, Barnes, & Erben 91 

Flannel dress-goods 99 

Flax in Egypt 68 

Fly-wheels, Weight of 44 

French cashmeres 57 

French worsted manufacture. ... 86 

Fulling mills, Early 15 

G 

Gilling 51 

Great Britain, Cotton manufac- 
turers of 79 

Greenwich, R.I 94 

H 

Hadley Company .............. 72 

Hamilton Manufacturing Com- 
pany 93, 95 

Hand combing 53, 54 

Hand weaving , 62 

Harding, Whitman, & Co 39 

Harness twine 74 

Hartshorne, William D ■4i> 42 

Hayes, J. F. C 27 



Page 

Hayes, John L 89, 91 

Health of textile operatives 117 

Heating 31 

Heilmann, Josue 53, 88 

Herrick, Nehemiah 28 

Herrick's bridge 28 

History of Arlington Mills. . ..» 24 
History of worsted manufacture. 82 
Hockanum Company. ....... .. 90 

"Homespun " inanufactures 13 

HooksetMill 94 

Horse-power of boilers 42 

Horse-power of engines 44 

Hosiery yarns 104 

Hours of labor 113 

Huddlesfield 90 

I 

Imports of dress-goods 100 

Increase of spindles 79 

J 

Jackson, Patrick T 26 

Jersey cloth 83 

K 

Kay, John 9 

Kittredge, Henry G 91 

Knitting yarns , 107 

L 

Laboratory 60 

Lambard, Charles A 29 

Lawrence, City of ... 27, 1 19 



132 



INDEX. 



Page 

Lawrence, Abbott 26, 27 

Lawrence, Amos 18, 26, 27, 78 

Lawrence, Samuel 27 

Lawrence Duck Company 28 

Lawrence & Co 39 

Lister combing machine 52,53 

Lodge, Josiah 90 

Lowell 17. 27, 110 

Lowell, Francis C 18, 26 

"Lowell Offering" no 

Luster goods 98 

M 

Machine and carpenter shops ... 43 

Machinery, Choice of 19 

Manchester, England 77 

Manchester Mills 93, 94) 95 

Manufacturer, The American ... 9 

Marland, John 93 

Merrill, B. L 35 

Merrimac river 24, 26 

Methuen Woolen Company 25 

Mixing-room, Cotton 70 

Monroe Paper Co 28 

Montgomery, R. M 89 

Mousselines de laine 88 

Mudge, E. R 89, 90 

Mule spinning 57 

Mutton sheep, Wool of 87 

N 

Name, Change of 37 

National Association of Wool 

Manufacturers 91 

Needling- room 71 



Page 

New England and the South 77 

Nickerson, Albert Winslow • ... 35, 37 

Nickerson, George A 37 

Nickerson, Joseph 30, 36 

Noble combing machine 52 

Noils 54 

Norfolk 86 

North wing, The 49 

o 

Office of cotton mills 72 

Offices of worsted mills 41 

Olive-oil soap 106 

Organism of a mill. 19 

P 

Pacific Mills 27, 93, 95, 96 

Palloteau, Dauphinot 87 

Paris Exposition, 1867 89 

Pawtucket, R. 1 14 

Payson, Samuel R 93, 94 

Pemberton Mills 28 

Philadelphia Exposition 96 

Philanthropy in manufacturing . in 

Philips & Kunhardt 28 

Philosophy of manufactures .... 117 

Plan of Arlington Mills 40 

Poplins 97 

Power-loom, The 62 

Product in worsted yarn 57 

Production of cotton in United 

States 80 

Products of the Arlington Mills, 102 

Printing delaines 94 



INDEX. 



133 



Pag-e 

Q 

Qualifications of manufacturers . 17 

R 

Raw material 20 

Redford, Robert 38,41,65 

Reeling-building 60 

Reorganization of company .... 35 

Revolving top-flat cards 71 

Rheims 87, 104 

Rhett, Robert Barnwell 78 

Robinson, Mrs. Harriet H 109 

Rochdale pioneers 120 

Roubaix 87, 89 

Roving 56 

Russell Paper Company 28 

Russell, William A 37 

s 

Salt, Sir Titus 53 

Sanitary and hygienic conditions 

Sargent estate „ 28 

Savings banks 112 

Sawyer, Joseph. .. 92 

Scholfields, The 14 

Scouring- room, The 49 

Sea Island cotton 76 

Selden, George L 41 

Selling agents 38, 39 

Shipping facilities 45 

Singeing 64 

Sizes of yarns, how calculated. . . 58 

Skilled and unskilled labor 118 



Page 

Slater, Samuel 14 

Slow burning construction 30 

Slubbing 55 

Specific duties 79 

Special machinery 106 

Spicket river 24, 28, 42 

Splicings 107 

Sorting-rooms 48 

Sorting wool 106 

South, Cotton manufacture in . . 77 
Spindle, Consumption of cotton 

per 76 

Spindles, cotton. Number of ... . 67 

Spindles, worsted, Number of. . . 57 
Spindles, worsted. Number of, in 

England 13 

Spinning-rooms, Worsted 56 

Spinning worsted yarn 56 

Stevens, Abiel 28 

Storage of tops 55 

Storehouse, Cotton 69 

Storehouse, Wool 44 

Storrow, Charles 27 

Strutt, Jedediah 14 

Sykes, George 90, 91 

T 

Tariff" legislation 99 

Taylor & Sons . 90 

Technical terms 63 

Telephone system 33 

Textile manufactures 125 

"Tops" 54 



134 



INDEX. 



Page 

Towne, George W 72 

Twisting , 108 

Twisting-building 60 

u 

Ure, Dr. Andrew 117 

V 

Variety of worsteds 102 

Ventilation 31 

Vickerman, Charles 54, 85 

Voltaire 18 

w 

Wages ,. 113, 118 

Wainwright, Charles 119 

Warmer clothing 99 

Warp yarns 72 

Weave-room, The 61 

Warping-rooms 61 

Waste „ . 71 

Water-power 25 

Washington Mills. . .28, 89, 90, 91, 96 

Washing wool 45, 106 

Weekly payments 119 



Page 

Wheeler, Sumner 30 

Whitman, William 35, 37, 38 

Women in factories 116 

Wool, Imported 46, 47 

Wool, Per capita consumption of 46 

Wool, quantity used 46 

Wool,TarifFon 47 

Woolen and worsted 82 

Woolen yarn, described 85 

Worsted manufacture. History of 82 

Worsted mills, The 40 

Woi-sted yarn, described 84 

Worsted yarn, quantity manu- 
factured 57 

Wright, Carroll D .31, 116 

Wright, John S. & Eben, & Co. . 38 
Wright Manufacturing Co 28 

Y 

Yarns, Cotton 72 

Yarns, Worsted, for sale 104 

Young, Jeremiah S 93 

z 

Zephyr yarns 104 










^0'=i<. 














M (? « ^ 



^^^ 










•^^ * 






c^ 



,-^- 







V '-^ 



^^ "^ v^ 



-. .<?- 




,0 n 















V « * s » A*^ 






^^A v^' 



vV •^c^, 



^ 



'a, > 






O^ 



.#' 





,V^^ "^' 



.^^ . . 



^'r% ^"^ ^■'=^^^'^' 













\^^, ^.^ ^ 



\"0 ■!■ 









V, ' 







<^ ■* ^ y-^ A 












> '^ ,'^ '51 o. -f^ . 



^%/ 'S:^ 



r ^^. 






.^^ 






LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 

IllilllllllllPil.^, 

018 532 855 7 •! 




